Cascade
by magistrate
Summary: Squinoa, Quiefer, Zellphie. Another day, another dollar, another allconsuming evil. That's life in Garden for youshort, sweet, and easily destroyed.
1. Predation

_Take a look at your world.  
  
Take a look at everything you've come to know and grown up knowing. Listen to the wind blow across the valleys. Watch the color drain from a dying evening sky. Realize the emptiness of it all. The impermanence of it. Even mountains crumble in the end. Even oceans dry.  
  
If you could reach out and stop that--stop that slow dying--then such a world it would be....  
  
But that is, eternally, impossible. Like a dark rider upon a pale horse, time goes ever by.  
_

-

Three months ago, the world had come perilously close to ending.  
  
Not that you would know it, looking around. The world was going along quite happily in its seasonal routines, engrossed in the flurry of activity which, every year, preempted winter. Birds sailed through the sky in pursuit of warmer climes, mammals hoarded what food they could find, and hibernating creatures retreated into their dens for the long sleep. Even the monsters were beginning to get ready for the cold months--which meant, of course, that they would be trying to gorge themselves before slinking away into some dark corner to conserve their energy.  
  
Out in the wild, that would hardly be a problem. Monsters tended to go after other monsters, when all the natural wildlife was too quick, too smart, or too small to be targeted and caught. However, this was hardly the wild--and the prey of choice was less than adept at its own self-defense.  
  
Most of them, that was.  
  
Seifer Almasy crouched, peering under the rows of shopping panels at the malnourished Torama growling at him from its nest in the mess of cords and wires. He had briefly entertained the thought of crawling in after it, but given the space allowed and the fact that the Torama looked more than capable of clawing his face off if he went in crawling on his stomach, he had decided against it.  
  
The Torama was burrowed back so far that the Hyperion couldn't touch it, and Seifer didn't look forward to shorting out the mall computers with any sort of elemental magic. It would have been easy if he has some kind of Sleep spell--or, heck, just casting a Break on it and leaving the maintenance workers on the next shift to wonder why there was a particularly lifelike statue in amongst the wiring would do the trick. Of course, that would raise the problem of how he was supposed to get paid--but that was hardly a problem, right at the moment. He had more than enough money, and technically he didn't need to be out here--but it was a matter of principle, now.  
  
When it became clear that there wasn't going to be any easy way to go about finishing the monster off, Seifer resigned himself to the hard way. Hyperion as ready as he could make it, he crawled underneath the panels.  
  
Half an hour later, receiving thirteen stitches in his right cheek, he reflected on how stupid an idea it had been. And how he really, _really_ needed a new day job.

-

Kiros was hanging around the Bounty Claim Office when he finally got there, Torama tail in hand and ready to collect on the 2000 gil reward. As soon as the presidential advisor noticed him he came over, raising an eyebrow at the bandage that covered half of his face. "Message from SeeD came through this morning," he said. "They want to remind you that their offer for re-admittance is still good, but it _will_ expire in December."  
  
"Thanks," Seifer sad, presenting the tail to a sullen woman behind the counter. She looked over it to ensure its validity, and shelled out the payment.  
  
"You planning on taking them up on it, this time?" There was an element of chiding in his voice.  
  
Seifer pocketed the money. "Yeah, maybe," he halfway answered.  
  
Kiros gestured to the bandage. "Don't you think you really ought to let the dedicated monster hunters take over the show?" he asked. "Pickings are getting pretty slim inside the City, anyway, or so I hear."  
  
Seifer shrugged. "Just cleaning up after myself," he deferred. "Anyway, the pay is good."  
  
Kiros eyed the bandage again. "Not _that_ good," he said.  
  
"Enough to live on." Seifer gave him a pointed look, and Kiros dropped the subject wordlessly. "Why are you out here, anyway? Or did you just come to deliver a message?"  
  
Kiros crossed his arms, looking off through the translucent pastels of Esthar. "Well, yeah, there is something else."  
  
"No kidding. What?"  
  
"You'll never guess who's here to see you." 


	2. Occupation

_It is eyes, all eyes, that remain in memory. Grasping, clutching, holding eyes, eyes that death cannot blind nor soil close. Of the eye and mouth, the eye is the more eloquent organ. Eyes make unfathomable demands when words fail.  
  
We look at the sun and call it an eye. We look at the moon and call it an eye. We look at the stars, and when they fall they are eyes which goad tragedy into the depths of the soul. What is impulse, what inclination? What is destiny to that pale, cold rain?  
  
Stars fall, eyes fall, spirits fall. A white dove rises, and is stricken from the sky._

-

The first time Squall had come to Esthar, he hadn't been terribly impressed by it. Granted, he hadn't been of the mindset to be impressed by much at the time, but it was still an accomplishment given the normal foreigner reaction upon seeing the city.  
  
Over the course of his subsequent visits the place had begun to sink in, and he was starting to realize exactly how incredible the city-state was.  
  
Still several years past the rest of the world in terms of technology, Esthar was as close to a utopia as existed within the modern world. The streets were clean, the people were fed, and the government was neither sclerotic and ineffectual nor oppressive. It was someplace very nearly too good to be true--and any time he visited, the fact still set Squall on edge. He hadn't been embroiled neck-deep in Galbadia's political turmoil without learning some things, and one of those facts was that things nearly too good to be true were often much, much worse than the things that seemed bad from the offset.  
  
You weren't a good SeeD, not really, if you couldn't force yourself not to fidget. Often, SeeDs needed to be able to negotiate under pressure, or bluff their way though a difficult situation. That required one to be in control of themselves not to let any hint of agitation or anxiety slip, and _that_ required a poker face to rival a cyborg's. So, despite the fact that he kept half-expecting conspirators to come out of the ventilation systems (unlikely, given that fresh air was dispersed through a metal grate a Meltdown couldn't warp) or assassins to come in through the windows (equally unlikely, given that whatever polymer they used in window construction seemed to be _stronger_ than the metal which formed the vent grates), Squall sat quietly in the Presidential Palace's waiting room and counted the seconds that the clock ticked off.  
  
He was somewhere in the upper eight-hundred range, after several restarts, when the door finally opened. Still operating on diplomatic mode, he rose immediately to be standing when his guest came in.  
  
His guest did not seem at all impressed.  
  
"I _thought_," Seifer said flatly, forsaking all the pleasantries, "that I told Xu _I_ would contact _her_ if and when I decided to take up her offer, and _not before_. What's going on?"  
  
It took Squall about three seconds to realize he had nothing to say to that. "...Laguna said I should talk to you," he answered.  
  
Seifer snorted. "Cute."  
  
Squall frowned. Every time he saw Seifer, it seemed like it got easier to be terribly annoyed at him. "...there's a dig going out tomorrow," he said. "Lunatic Pandora ruins."  
  
Seifer went still, carefully looking across the room at Squall and keeping himself far too stiff to really be read as neutral. "...and?" he said, voice a bit softer than normal.  
  
Squall half-shrugged, watching Seifer carefully. It was interesting, to his mind at least, to see how the erstwhile Knight froze up anytime anything touching upon his stint as Ultimecia's agent was mentioned. It was _almost_ as if he was ashamed. "SeeD is sponsoring it. We think there might be some GFs within the Pillar." He paused for a moment. "Laguna thought you might want to go."  
  
Seifer frowned, then very deliberately looked down to straighten out his cuff. "Don't see why I should care," he said, making a concerted effort to sound flippant about it.  
  
"Actually--" Squall frowned. "Laguna suggested that I should _convince_ you."  
  
Seifer cursed, keeping the profanity very carefully under his breath. "I don't need to be _saved_," he stated. "I have a life here, and I like it just fine."  
  
"Laguna is... concerned," Squall began awkwardly.  
  
Seifer rolled his eyes. "Oh, for _Hyne's_ sake," he snarled, already arraying words in his mind to shoot back with intent to wound. "I could get this if you were just buggin' me so that Garden could recruit someone of my _obviously superior abilities,_ but I _never_ thought I'd see Mr. Squall Leonhart, SeeD Commander, playing daddy's _lapdog_."  
  
Squall's eyes narrowed, and his shoulders hunched slightly--bringing the fur ruff of his jacket up a bit around his neck. It never failed to amuse Seifer how often Squall acted like a cat on whom a pail of water had just been dumped--defensive, annoyed, and in a way almost pathetic. With a certain amount of relish, Seifer waited to see what retort he would be met with.  
  
...a tense silence passed.  
  
"Time Compression isn't over," Squall growled, the only civility in his voice the fact that he _was_ talking and not doing something considerably more violent. "There are nodes of disturbance within the ruins. Laguna said if anyone would know what to read into that, it would be _you_."  
  
If words could manifest physical force, Seifer was pretty sure he'd have been put through a wall by those. _(find the legendary lunatic pandora only then shall the sorceress provide you with dreams again oh my loyal knight seifer the sorceress is alive the sorceress demands find the legendary lunatic pandora only then--)_  
  
With an incoherent snarl, he lashed out at the nearest thing--the small endtable next to the couch. It toppled, sending its meagre contents scattering across the floor--and, thankfully, doing something to quiet the cacophony of whispering memories inside his mind.  
  
"_I don't know anything_," he snapped.  
  
"You're the only living person who knows what Ultimecia wanted," Squall countered darkly.  
  
"She told me what to do, she didn't tell me what she _wanted_." _(Those dreams--)_  
  
Squall shrugged. "Laguna would feel better if you were on the team," he deflected.  
  
"Well--"  
  
"And he wanted me to remind you that you would be paid."  
  
_(Dammit.)_ "Do I _look_ like I'm starving, Leonhart? 'cause everyone seems to _think_ I am."  
  
"No. You don't." Squall cast a critical eye over him, but didn't say any more. He didn't need to. Seifer could fill in the blanks, on his own.  
  
_(You look like you've lost your will to fight, Seifer. You look like you've given up, Seifer. You look like you just don't care any more, Seifer. You look like you've resigned yourself to a mediocre life taking odd jobs in the streets of Esthar to make a quick Gil and it's **not fakking LIKE** you, Seifer.)_ "I don't need _charity._ Not Laguna's, and _not yours_."  
  
Squall crossed his arms. "Garden isn't concerned with giving out charity," he said. "We _are_ concerned about the Crystal Pillar. You're uniquely suited to the job, and if you don't take it we'll have to find someone who isn't. _Laguna_ is the one who's looking out for your best interests. _I_ don't care."  
  
Seifer gestured angrily. "What _exactly_ would I be doing on this team of yours?" he demanded.  
  
Squall gave him a long-suffering look--the kind he wore when he had to obey his orders but that didn't mean he had to _like_ them. "Leading it," he replied. 


	3. Authority

_They say that when Hyne forsook the Garden, it was the first three steps that damned the world. The first was for betrayal--to step far from the tools he had cast away; tools that had cut the hand of their wielder. The second was for trickery--the lie that began the great wars of the world. The third was for escape--to slip beyond the curtains of the Time and forget them.  
  
Hyne was the only god of the world, and his second godly act was to destroy. His white flame burned the fated children, for the life he had given was as easily taken away. From the sparks of this heat came the Sorcery.  
  
And we called the fire Holy._

-

Quistis rarely had to look around to guess who entered a room when a door was opened. There were enough telltale signatures to let her identify any one of her comrades easily--a witty quip in greeting would come from Irvine, an excited "Hey, guys!" would always proceed Selphie, and so on.  
  
When the door to the Esthar Palace Tea Room opened to admit only silence and heavy footfalls, she hardly hesitated before smiling and tossing off a genial "Hello, Squall."  
  
Rinoa, sitting across from her, glanced up and smiled. "How did it go?" she asked.  
  
Squall stalked quietly to her side of the room, settling down in a chair near hers. "...he agreed," he said simply.  
  
Rinoa smiled, laying a hand on his elbow. His gaze flickered to her for a moment, and then returned to Quistis.  
  
"We need to line up a team," he said. Quistis nodded.  
  
"Dr. Odine and Colonel Chale have their men assigned already," she said. "As for our SeeDs, I think Nida and Maiser would be good choices. Usher would be a natural choice to supervise--"  
  
"Nida is out," Squall responded. "He's been assigned to the Tear's Point team."  
  
"Well, what about Draka? He and Usher have worked together several times before, and Maiser will be a good supplement--"  
  
"It would be best to send two people on this mission," Squall stated flatly. "A more flexible team. ...and I'd like _you_ to supervise, Quistis."  
  
Quistis snapped her mouth shut on her next suggestion, and frowned. "You would like me to work under _Seifer's_ command," she said.  
  
"Technically, Seifer is _directing_ the mission. He'll have no real authority over you." Squall gestured vaguely with one hand. "I need you to keep an eye on him."  
  
_(Of course. He **needs** me.)_ It was hard to refuse Squall when he used language that strong--and, it seemed, he was beginning to realize it. Sometimes, Quistis wondered if Rinoa's influence on him was really all that positive. "Who'll be my support?"  
  
"Maiser and Usher are both competent SeeDs," he responded. "...I wouldn't recommend Draka."  
  
"Fine. Maiser." Quistis swiped the glasses off the bridge of her nose, cleaning them on the hem of her jacket. "I don't think this is a good idea at _all_, Squall."  
  
Squall shrugged. "Laguna insists that we can trust Seifer," he said. "Naturally, you'll have to assess that for yourself."  
  
Quistis let out a dry chuckle. "But _you_ don't trust him."  
  
Squall shrugged again. "...it's best not to."  
  
Quistis stood up, replacing her glasses. "Well," she said. "I'm going to file the assignment with Xu. I'll see both of you later."  
  
Squall nodded civilly, and Quistis stepped out. Rinoa glanced over, obviously glad that official business was done. "...you really won't forgive him, will you?"  
  
Squall looked at her with the same patience it had taken him three months to develop. "It's not a matter of _forgiving_ him," he answered.  
  
"He hasn't done _anything_ since... since it all ended."  
  
Squall exhaled softly, glancing down at the carpet. "He hasn't had a _chance_ to. ...Xu wanted him back at Garden so that we could monitor him. Since he refused that, Esthar's been taking care of it for us. Laguna trusts him enough to send him on this. All we can do is make sure nothing--"  
  
"--goes wrong?" Rinoa sighed. "I think you're wrong, Squall. I think this really is about forgiveness. _No one _can forgive him for what he's done."  
  
Squall glanced sharply at her, and she could almost hear the unspoken _"Should we?"_ at the tip of his tongue. Leaning in, she looked earnestly into his eyes.  
  
"It wasn't his fault," she said. "I would know. Ultimecia, she--" She suppressed a shudder. "You don't know how it _feels_."  
  
Squall stood up, gently removing his arm from under her hand. "I understand," he said. "But if Ultimecia really controlled him, he might still be susceptible. Sending him into the Crystal Pillar is a bad way to test that theory." He made an offhand gesture. "It's _not_ a matter of forgiving him. It's a matter of _trusting_ him, and we can't. ...I'm sorry."  
  
Rinoa's eyebrows raised, ever-so-slightly. "I don't think it's _me_ you need to apologize to, Squall," she said.  
  
Squall frowned. "...I have to go," he said.  
  
Rinoa nodded. "I'll see you at dinner," she guessed.  
  
"...yeah," Squall agreed. "I'll see you."  
  
With that, he stepped out the door. 


	4. Machination

_The road to the Sorcery Memory is paved with bone, they say. Discs of bone from great beasts, from proud monsters, and from the corpses of fallen Kings. It is mortared with dragon's blood and lined with the metal of fallen stars. At night, the eye of the moon opens and floods the land with Holy's light. The Way stands prepared.  
  
All roads lead to ruin. When the Eye closes darkness shrouds the way. When the Eye cries, the Way is set alight.  
  
And so they built a rune from the coffins of the spirits, and bid Atlas hold back the sky. But Atlas will tire. 'The sky is falling, the sky is falling,' cries the little bloodied wren._

-

Nida lay on his back atop the Garden transport, staring up at the night sky in utter, all-consuming boredom. It was nine thirty. Theoretically, his team was supposed to be meeting him at that moment. Knowing them, he suspected he would be lucky if he saw them before ten.  
  
Given that he had never commanded a mission before, he had a feeling putting him in charge of _this_ one was some kind of a sick joke.  
  
Light footsteps approached the lot from the direction of the city proper, and Nida glanced over to see who was approaching.  
  
_(Selphie,)_ he identified. _(There's **one** half of this crazy team.)_  
  
"Heeey," Selphie called. "...where's Zell?"  
  
"Fashionably late," Nida hazarded.  
  
Selphie tucked her arms behind her, standing up on tiptoe to try to get a glimpse of Nida's face. "you look bored," she said.  
  
"No kidding. Wonder why."  
  
"Why do they have us leaving now, anyway?" Selphie glanced back at the city, which was giving off a soft glow. "It'll still _be_ there in the morning, won't it?"  
  
"We won't get there until tomorrow afternoon, so if it's not there in the morning leaving now won't help, anyway." Nida kicked at a protruding weld on the top of the van idly. He had a feeling that his retort was going a bit over Selphie's head, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.  
  
Selphie giggled, and Nida shrugged to himself. "So... really," Selphie asked. "Why?"  
  
"They want us out there to monitor it in case the Crystal Pillar team does something to produce a reaction in the array, and it's a longer drive," Nida explained. "It was all in your briefing."  
  
"I was gonna read it on the way over," Selphie said.  
  
"Well, that's one way to do it." Nida kicked at the weld again.  
  
"What's the other way?"  
  
"Well, you could read it _before_ leaving like they try to teach you in basic training. But, hey, that's just SeeD regulation. Who pays any attention to _that_?"  
  
Selphie didn't get a chance to respond, as Zell came barreling into the parking lot at that moment. "Hey! Sorry I'm late," he apologized. "My T-Board broke down halfway here--I had to leave it on the side of the road an' _everything_--"  
  
Nida groaned. "Zell?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"You realize that the _skyway_ will drop you within five minutes' walk of here?"  
  
Zell's hand went up to the back of his neck. "Yeah, but--I never really liked that thing."  
  
Nida rolled his eyes. "Gee, that's not what you said when you _got_ here and proceeded to ride every one in the city three--"  
  
"So, anyway, are we going?" Selphie interrupted smoothly, opening the door to the van. "I wanna drive!"  
  
"Oh, whatever the _hell_," Nida muttered, sitting up and hopping down from the roof of the transport. "Yeah, let's just go. Try not to crash us into anything, will you?"  
  
"All righty!" Selphie revved up the engine, leaving Nida and Zell to leap into the van. With what was probably an unsafe speed, they left the lot and sped out toward Tears Point.

-

_Something was broken.  
  
The Guardian Force rolled over in the darkness, physical form hardly containing its noncorporeal essence. The resonance had spiked briefly and then dissipated, and that was something that shouldn't be happening. And that meant that something was broken.  
  
Slipping into the ether, it shot itself toward the centre of the Pillar. It didn't know what it was looking for--a crack, a hole, possibly even a total break in one of the chords. Whatever it was, it had to have happened recently--and there was no explanation for that.  
  
Unless....  
  
Unless....  
  
...the Force pushed that possibility out of its mind. If that wasn't the case, then there was no sense worrying about it. If it was the case, then there would be no chance to worry about it--not much of a chance, at least, before the world went to hell.  
  
Extrasenses alert, the Force spiraled ever deeper into the fluctuating patterns of magic that traversed the Crystal Pillar. It was sure that everything would be sorted out... soon enough._


	5. Man Down

_How in a cavern of ice may one light the way? Flame will melt the road and reflected light will blind you. Walking up the icy slop takes you three steps forward and five paces back--that is what the Prophets say.  
  
At the core of Truth lies Delusion. Rain is formed around the specks of dust--the cleanest things are founded in uncleanliness. When you go to the centre of the crystal, you see not the reflection but the grain.  
  
If this planet is the centre of its universe, what hope is there?_

-

The Lunatic Pandora was an impressive sight, even ruined as it was. It had crashed shortly after Time Compression had taken hold and now lay on the ground, largely cracked and shattered--it stretched out nearly five kilometres across the plains, still higher than any number of Esthar buildings. As the field transport approached it, it was like moving into the night--the shadow it cast across the plains was deeper than anything else in sight. A tangible chill took hold of the air as they drew closer and closer.  
  
The entrance was little more than a tall crack in the black surface leading into one of the corridors, easily wide enough to drive the transport through and so tall that it dwarfed them. The corridor itself was only about six metres high, but the crack continued upward across the surface of the monolithic building. It was daunting, to say the least.  
  
The SeeDs--and Seifer--got out first, checking the area quickly to make sure that there was nothing dangerous. The Esthar Science Team came out next, pulling their equipment behind them. Seifer glanced over it--he suspected that the scientists themselves didn't know what half of it did.  
  
"Right," Quistis said smartly, catching everyone's attention. "Odine pointed us at this area of tunnels for a reason. It's all pretty much self-contained, and the hallways--as far as we know--are intact. We're advised not to stay in this area too long, so let's get what readings we need and get out."  
  
The scientists got going, talking excitedly amongst themselves and beginning to calibrate the equipment as they moved. There was no sign of danger.  
  
Seifer wandered over to stand next to Quistis, surveying the team. "Taking command, Instructor?"  
  
Quistis frowned, trying to think of a way to defuse the encounter before it went anywhere she didn't want it to go. "Just making sure everyone knew what they were doing," she said.  
  
"Good job. Maybe you could tell _me_ what _I'm_ doing here," Seifer said--and evidently Quistis looked rather confused, because he followed it up with "it's never really been made clear to me."  
  
"From what I understand," Quistis explained cooly, stepping after the scientists, "you're to provide information and direction in case we come upon anything related to Time Compression."  
  
"So if Ultimecia appears, I'm supposed to tell everyone why she wears her hair like that and kill her, basically?" Seifer's words were tinged with acid.  
  
Quistis sighed. Trust _Seifer _to make everything more complicated that it had any right to be.... "I honestly don't anticipate Ultimecia returning, Seifer."  
  
"Yeah, because she was so anticipated the _first_ time." Seifer ran his hand along one wall absently, staring into the confused muddle of reflections inside the Lunatic Pandora. "Leonhart said this was Laguna's idea. Was it?"  
  
Quistis nodded. "He's trying to help you, you know."  
  
"I don't _need_ help."  
  
"Have you told him that?"  
  
"Many, many times." Seifer dropped his hand, glaring at the back of one of the scientists. "What are we looking for, in here?"  
  
"Anything." Quistis motioned vaguely. "This place is like nothing Esthar's ever seen. Reactive, paramagical crystal. Odine spent a good time studying it before it was dumped in the middle of the Ocean, but now that Time Compression's run through it, he wants to study it all over again." She sighed. "This is probably the first of a long line of expeditions."  
  
"How exciting," Seifer deadpanned.  
  
Quistis shook her head. "I wouldn't expect you to be interested," she said. "As I recall, you were never into _any_ of the natural sciences...."  
  
"Excuse me," one of the scientists called from up ahead. "There's something here one of you may want to take a look at."  
  
Conversation cut short, Seifer and Quistis hurried over to where the man had called from. He was standing at the edge of what looked to be a deep gash in the ground--pointing warily to a small, black _something_ on the wall across the drop.  
  
"What is it?" Quistis asked.  
  
"That's what I was holing you could tell me," the man said. "I thought it might be some kind of panel...."  
  
Seifer walked carefully around the sheer drop, approaching the far wall. He put a hand out, running his fingers over the device as if he was trying to remember what it was. The scientist waited patiently, not wanting to distract him.  
  
One of the gauges on the device clicked on, a light flashed through the cavern--and a glint of recognition flashed in Seifer's eyes. He took a step back from it warily. "This is--"  
  
The ground gave way beneath him.  
  
What had looked to be solid crystal split and disintegrated, caving down into whatever space was below the walkway. Seifer barely had time to do so much as glance downward--  
  
--and then he was gone. 


	6. Disturbance

_Trapped, a plainscat paces and paces within its cage. It know nothing of philosophy--this urge for freedom is something inherited, something distilled from the essence of dust and life. Its enemy is the cold steel as much as the one who has put it there--unrelenting, unyielding, incomprehensible. But it does not give up--it does not give up hope because hope is unknown to it, and it does not give up life because life is all it is. Suicide is a notion only humanity has been sick enough to invent.  
  
Caged, we pace the world in anticipation of the day the bars will break. The sky is split asunder, the wind runs free about us. Unchained, unleashed, it is larger than our confinement and more brutal.  
  
What is it in freedom that makes us yearn for such an end?_

-

It had all happened in the space of an instant. One moment, Seifer had been investigating the panel--the next, there were cracks spreading through the floor and threatening to dump them all wherever Seifer had fallen.  
  
Quistis and Maiser got everyone back away from the crevice, out of immediate danger--and watched as fully half of the hallway crumbled under its own weight. It didn't take long for it to run its course--soon, the dust had subsided and the ground steadied itself again.  
  
"Get any sensitive equipment back to the entry," Quistis snapped, taking charge as a matter of course once the immediate danger was gone. "There's no telling if this entire area is unstable."  
  
Maiser stepped up to the edge of the crevice as the scientists rushed to obey the order. "What about him?"  
  
"I'll see if he's all right," Quistis said, crouching and sneaking one foot down over the edge. The rubble had fallen into a pile by the edge of the drop, and it might be possible to climb down...  
  
"Careful," Maiser said, taking her arm to help her down. "You sure about this?"  
  
"Well, much as it would probably please Squall, we can't just leave him down there." Quistis picked her way gingerly down the slope, descending until her head was easily below ground level. Maiser watched from above, shining his flashlight down into the shadowed darkness to try to help her pick out a path.  
  
"Watch out, there," he warned, flicking his light over something. "It looks like--_watch_ that, it drops again!"  
  
Quistis discovered it for herself, an instant too late to be helped by Maiser's warning. Her boots slipped, and slid the last few metres to the bottom of the crevice in a rush. She barely managed to land in a crouch, arms spread to regain what little balance she could.  
  
It was _cold_ below the walkway. Cold, and... _cavernous._  
  
The crystal was still resonating, and shafts of light pierced the darkness at uneven intervals. The floor was as slick as ice--for all she knew, it _was_ ice. She stood only with great difficulty.  
  
_"Trepe!"_ Maiser's voice echoed oddly off the walls. _"Are you all right?"_  
  
"Fine," Quistis replied, unhooking her palm light from her belt and switching it on. A quick survey of the area told her what she needed to know--Seifer had fallen near the far end, and was lying on his side against a pile of scree. To all appearances, he was unconscious.  
  
She made her way over gingerly, kneeling down to check him over. He was breathing, and nothing _appeared_ broken--a quick check confirmed that.  
  
As gently as she could, she rolled him onto his back so that she could check his pupils--and froze.  
  
His scar had split open--perfectly along it, as if cut for the first time. Blood flowed liberally from it, coating half of his face.  
  
_"...Trepe?"_  
  
Maiser's voice jolted her out of her surprise. "Seifer's here, but he's injured," she said. "Can you get some kind of a harness down to us? We can pull him back up the drop."  
  
_"I'll see what we have,"_ Maiser called back.  
  
Quistis rocked back on her heels. Ordinarily she would have raised Seifer back to consciousness with a Phoenix Down or a Life spell so that she could have Cured his scar, but Siren was a constant buzz in the back of her mind that told her that _this _was not the best place to be casting magic. She didn't know what would happen--but with everything she had heard or seen about the Crystal Pillar, she wasn't eager to go against the advice of her GFs.  
  
So, seeing no other option readily available, she dug a cloth and some gauze out of her pack and went to work cleaning and bandaging the wound as neatly as possible. That completed, she sat down and waited.  
  
...and waited.  
  
After what had to be well over fifteen minutes, she stood up and walked back to the drop. "Maiser?" she called.  
  
There was no response.  
  
Quistis frowned. "Can anybody hear me?" she demanded, now expecting no answer. She was alone.  
  
The resonance was still there, humming just along the edges of her perception. There was no other sound in the cavern. Not even the quiet voices of her GFs broke the tedium.  
  
_(...wait.)_  
  
Quistis put a hand out to the wall, searching the back of her mind for the soft sense of _warning_ that Siren had been putting out until then. There was only silence.  
  
Making a quick judgment, Quistis decided to test out to see if magic was working as it should again. _(Something light,)_ she thought. _(Nothing that will damage anything much if it goes awry.)_  
  
Glancing at one of the larger rocks that had rolled across the floor, she isolated it in her mind and stretched out her hand. _(Float--)_  
  
A moment later, she was on the ground as Cerberus screamed _ALERT_ into her mind at maximum volume.  
  
The volume of the resonance had increased to a low rumble, and it could easily be felt through the floor and walls. For all she knew, the world might have been shaking itself apart.  
  
Seifer groaned, eyes flickering open. He stared up at the ceiling, obviously dazed. Quistis scrambled to her feet, intent on moving to help him--  
  
A lance of pain stabbed across the back of her mind, almost bringing her to the floor again. Cerberus's Alert was a stronger force than it had ever been before.  
  
...and it was warning her away from _him_. 


	7. Resonance

_Prophecies are read in tea, in bones, and in the slow cycles of the stars. Augury, sorcery... these are only tools to fight an uncertain future. And even Hyne learned too late that tools easily cut the hand of the Maker.  
  
Blood drips from she sky when the Cup overflows. What use are prophecies then? The only use is the sword and shield, flame and cutting cold. There is no bandage which closes the wounds of the sky or the soul.  
  
Small wounds are forgotten when great wounds are taken. Who knows but the heavens may be close to dying, all to be ignored when the moon's blood seeps?_

-

Four hours into the mission proper, Nida was giving serious consideration to killing both of his teammates.  
  
"Did you know that if you shoot a bullet horizontally and _drop_ a bullet at the same time, they'll hit the ground at the same time?" Selphie asked, lying spread-eagled on the ground and staring up at the clouds.  
  
"Yeah," Zell responded. He was shadowboxing--he had been doing that a lot, stopping for short breaks in the shade of the weird blocklike runes that made up Tears Point. It was hot, on the plains. "Did _you_ know that it only takes five pounds of force to break bone?"  
  
"Yeah," Selphie said, searching her brain for another piece of useless trivia. "Did you know that stones found on this side of the moon have a higher paramagical concentration than stones from the dark side of the moon?"  
  
"Did you know that a trained assassin can kill two people in less than five seconds if given the correct equipment?" Nida interrupted.  
  
"Yeah," both of them chorused back.  
  
"All right, I give up." Nida had been sitting--resting his back against one of the huge blocks--but now he stood, glancing around in aggravation. Nothing interesting had happened yet, and--given his luck--nothing interesting _would_. Ever. It was a fool's mission, and the people at Garden probably _knew_ it. "I'm going for a walk. Find me if the world ends."  
  
Without waiting for a response, he wandered off down one of the wide lanes between the runes. Tears Point was impressive, sure--but this mission was offering him about as much excitement as a geological survey. And at least in a geological survey, one could look around and see the sights.  
  
Here, the only sights were the row upon row upon row of weird monoliths and the statues in the middle, who seemed to be totally engrossed in... staring blankly out into the distance.  
  
A few of them had instruments. Nida wondered why.  
  
Sitting down in the shade of one of the enormous feet, Nida leaned back and stared at the sky. There was really very little else to do. With a sigh, he let his mind wander and fully expected it not to come back.  
  
"Hey, Nida!"  
  
Nida groaned as Selphie approached. "What is it?"  
  
"Did you know if the magical concentration in the Tears Point array drops below point oh-two-one of whatever it's measured in, it means that there's a high probability of a Lunar Cry in the near future?"  
  
He sighed. "No, Selphie. No, I didn't."  
  
"Neither did I!" Selphie admitted. "But that's what it says in the overall briefing."  
  
"Yeah... I remember something like that, I guess."  
  
"I just thought you'd like to know, since the screen on that thing they had us bring along is reading point oh-one-three."  
  
Nida froze. Very carefully--as if afraid of disturbing the universe in _just_ the wrong way, like the butterfly who flapped his wings in Esthar and somehow orchestrated a bank crash in Deling City--Nida stood up and glanced skyward. The moon was there--pale in the sunlight, looking big and calm and generally non-threatening.  
  
"So maybe we should report that, huh?"  
  
"Maybe!" Selphie agreed. "I mean, it would be, like, a mega-bummer if there was another Lunar Cry, huh?"  
  
"I would _think_." Nida dusted himself off, walking back toward the entrance. "If there was an anomaly, we were supposed to run some kind of in-depth scan. Are we doing that?"  
  
"Yeah, Zell's figuring it out," Selphie said.  
  
"Well, _that's_ good news." Nida picked up his pace.  
  
When they arrived, Zell appeared to be doing some kind of a victory dance in front of the monitoring equipment. "_Oh_, yeah! They call me the _machine_ when it comes to machines, baby!"  
  
"Zell?" Nida stole up beside him, glancing over the readout. "First off, _no one_ calls you that. Second, _never_ call me 'baby' again."  
  
Zell looked a bit startled. "I wasn't--"  
  
"So, anyway, we'll stay here for the rest of the time we're supposed to unless Hexadragons start hitting us on the head. Once that's done, we run back to Esthar like scared ninnies. Sound about right?"  
  
"Sure!" Selphie plopped down next to the equipment. "Did you know--"  
  
"_Good_bye," Nida said, turning on his heel and wandering off back down the path. Impending Lunar Cry or no, this was still a fool's mission.  
  
It was going to be a long couple of hours. 


	8. Aid

_The old prophets have said: monsters war with monsters, and the abyss is a living mirror. We are frightened by realities and potentialities: what terrifies us more than the sword or the burning brand is the thought of the great darkness within the soul.  
  
The road to Hell is paved with kind words, simple truths, and the best of human intentions. But it is paved--lovingly, carefully, and well. The road to the heavens is crooked and grey; oft lost in the darkness, it is treacherous and steep.  
  
There is one man who will offer you his hand and guide you up the twists and turns, if only you will be his. He has no true name but a title: Lucifer, Bearer of Light._

-

Seifer was getting up.  
  
Unsteadily--_so_ unsteadily--he got to his feet, swaying as Rinoa had swayed when--  
_  
(When she wasn't **quite** in control of herself.)_  
  
Quistis slipped her chain whip from its spot at her side, holding it ready. Seifer put one hand out to the wall, the other to his forehead--and grimaced, staring at the blood that now dotted his palm, seeping through the bandage.  
  
"Are you all right?" Quistis asked carefully.  
  
Seifer glanced over, biting off a curse. "Do I _look_ all right?"  
  
"You're standing, at least," Quistis noted.  
  
"_Excellent_ deduction." Seifer lowered his arms--still keeping them rather spread for balance. "What the hell is all this _noise?"_  
  
Quistis shook her head. the resonance was still increasing--it was becoming harder and harder to speak over it. "I don't know," she returned. "Some kind of a resonance."  
  
"Oh, is _that_ all." Seifer took a step forward, nearly unbalancing himself. He stumbled back, putting his hands out to the wall again. "You don't think this is maybe one of those nodes of disturbance Leonhart was talking about?"  
  
Quistis paused at that, stretching all her senses to the maximum. "...this doesn't feel anything like Time Compression," she said warily.  
  
"You were _in_ Time Compression, _Instructor_. You know what it feels like from the outside?"  
  
"Like this?" she guessed.  
  
"_Like this_." Seifer pushed himself away from the wall again, staring upward at the remnants of the walkway. "Somewhere in the Pillar, time is compressing."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Seifer glanced in her direction, glaring. "Do _I_ look like Dr. Odine?" he demanded. "Hell should I know?"  
  
Quistis bit off a retort--it would do no good to start arguing, now. "...never mind. We should try to get out of here. It's likely it's not safe--"  
  
Seifer had a caustic comeback at the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed it. "Yeah. Sounds like a good plan. Any idea how to work it?"  
  
Quistis turned, walking carefully back to the pile of scree she had landed in and feeling the wall. "It's terribly slick," she said. "I'm not sure we could climb out, and using magic is out of the question. It doesn't look as if this cave here connects to any other sort of tunnel, and I'm not sure where Maiser's gone."  
  
Seifer shrugged. "So, we climb it."  
  
"Seifer--"  
  
"What?" Seifer gestured impatiently. "Everything else is impossible, and that's just _hard_. Seems like the obvious choice." Seifer approached--and Quistis took a step back, instinctively. He graced her with a tired glare, and looked up the wall. "There's a ledge up there, and it looks like it slopes up beyond that. We can probably manage it."  
  
Quistis looked up. The ledge was too high to reach without help--but, she reasoned, there were two of them. "Right. Who's going?"  
  
Seifer snorted. "Think you can lift me up there?"  
  
Quistis considered that for a moment. "...I'll go."  
  
"Let's go, then." Without preamble Seifer stepped forward, planting both hands on her hips and heaving her upward with all the force he could muster. Quistis gained a handhold on the ledge, scrambling onto it in a somewhat less-than-dignified manner.  
  
Finding something to brace herself against, she looped her chain whip and lowered it down. Seifer grabbed,it, pulling himself up as well as he could. Quistis winced as she hauled up on it--Seifer was rather heavier than he looked.  
  
"So," she said, fighting to get him up onto the ledge. "What was that device you were looking at?"  
  
Seifer had one hand on the ledge, and was making a fair show of pulling himself up. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said.  
  
"Why not?" Quistis turned to the slope, looking for an easy path up. "Given some of the things I've seen, it takes quite a bit to stretch the bounds of credibility."  
  
"Then I suppose you're hardly going to _blink_ when I tell you it was a draw-store device...."  
  
"It wouldn't be so out-of place _here_," Quistis said.  
  
"Containing _Griever_," Seifer finished.  
  
And Quistis very nearly fell of the ledge. 


	9. Crescendo

_The Poems of the Clans are grim ones, told to children in nursery-rhyme rhythm with bright smiles and hopeful airs. It is our nature, perhaps, to cloak despair in revelry--to smile and cheer the endings of the world.  
  
In the cradle or the grave, the harshest truths of the world are made known to us--they are our lullabies, our childhood games.  
  
"The Moon is a Lady, dancing Pirouettes  
In the bright times and shady, counting our debts."  
_  
_Do we call Death a Dancer?_

-

Squall looked worried.  
  
Rinoa could tell, even though he was trying very hard to disguise it. He had taken one of the Garden reports that Xu was supposed to be looking over, and was reading it cover to cover--presumably to make sure no one would bother him.  
  
He had just come out of a meeting with Laguna--and that didn't bode well. The two of them had managed to find _some_ kind of middle ground in the months since the Ultimecia mission, so Rinoa doubted that the matter was family-related--but the only other reason Squall would be meeting with him was over business, and the current business was something she would be more comfortable with if Squall _wasn't_ worried about it.  
  
Squall was quite adept at ignoring people who tried to make conversation, so just bringing up the meeting would probably get her exactly nowhere. So instead, she settled for staring at him over the top of the report--much as he tried, he couldn't ignore _that_ forever.  
  
True to form, after a few minutes Squall set aside the paper and graced her with a halfhearted glare. "What?"  
  
"You looked worried," Rinoa prompted. "What's going on?"  
  
"Nothing." Squall reached for the report again.  
  
"Squall " Rinoa gave him a stern look. "You can't think you're _that_ good at lying."  
  
Squall sighed quietly. "...it's the early reports from Odine's lab," he said. "They were just released."  
  
"And what did they say?"  
  
Squall drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, glancing out the window. "When we initiated Time Compression, it caused some kind of interference pattern in the world's ambient paramagic--it's the same kind of interference that we see every time there's a Lunar Cry, or enough Lunar Energy buildup to _cause_ a Lunar Cry."  
  
"And...?"  
  
"And the interference hasn't gone away. Instead, it's been increasing--exponentially. And we don't know what's causing it."  
  
Rinoa nodded. "So... what happens if it increases too much? A Lunar Cry?"  
  
Squall shook his head. "It's a symptom of an approaching lunar cry, not the cause. At this point, no one's sure what it _will_ cause--if it will cause _anything_."  
  
"But you have an idea?" Rinoa guessed.  
  
This time, it seemed she guessed wrong. "Not at all." Squall glanced down. "...but I think if it's usually a _symptom_ of something bad, it may be now, too."  
  
"You said it yourself," Rinoa reasoned. "Time Compression isn't over. Maybe it's--"  
  
"No." Squall cut her off, looking up sharply. "If it's been increasing since Time Compression was initiated, then that would mean that Time Compression itself would have had to keep increasing since then. And it _hasn't_. So that's not what we're looking at."  
  
"And what is?"  
  
"I _don't know_." Squall made a frustrated gesture with one hand, scowling. "But it's not Time Compression and it's not a Lunar Cry--and that means it's probably something no ones' _ever_ seen before."  
  
"Well," Rinoa said, smiling reassuringly. "We have the world's best minds working on it. I'm sure we'll figure it out."  
  
"I'm sure," Squall repeated--but he didn't sound at all convinced.

-

Nida was writing tables on the back of his SeeD briefing.  
  
The dip in whatever-it-was had normalized itself, going well back up into normal levels--and then dipped again, falling to .013 before beginning another swing back up. Nida was now checking the numbers every few minutes--scribbling a rough graph as he plotted them.  
  
So far, it was making sense in all the wrong ways.  
  
Selphie, having won the impromptu trivia contest with the number of distinct species of Hexadragon on the Island Closest to Hell, was watching over Nida's shoulder for want of anything else to do. "That's a sine graph, isn't it?"  
  
Nida glanced up. "Looks like one," he said. "Which is pretty weird, if you think about it."  
  
"Why's that?" Zell asked, staring at the detection device with an expression of ultimate boredom.  
  
"Because I would expect to see a sine graph on something determined by spinning things," Nida said.  
  
"Moon has cycles," Zell pointed out.  
  
"And if those cycles had a period of forty-seven minutes, that might be it." Nida glanced up at the moon. "_Something_ around here makes a full circle every three-quarters hour, and is controlling the probability of a Lunar Cry when it does."  
  
"Well, this place was _made_ to control the Lunar Cries," Zell pointed out. "Maybe it broke."  
  
"This place was made to _restrain_ the Lunar Cries," Nida corrected. "I hardly think they'd want to put in something to _trigger_ one."  
  
There was a moment of silence, and Nida sighed.  
  
"Well, we don't have much longer here," he said. "Soon enough, we'll give these numbers back to Odine and _he_ can figure it all out."  
  
"Yeah," Selphie began. "I guess we'll--"  
  
A thunderous chord interrupted her, and the ground began to shake. Nida yelped something and grabbed at the device as it began to skitter madly about, dancing on the quaking ground. "--_the hell?!"_  
  
"Whoa!" Zell was on his feet in a matter of instants--and very nearly on the ground again as it heaved beneath him. Three more chords followed the first, filling the air with sound.  
  
Nida soon saw what Zell had found so startling.  
  
At the centre of Tears Point, the statues had begun to play. 


	10. Science

_A Voice splits the air, keening in the ecstasy of grief. It is as strong as the wind and no less forceful; it is the Father and the Ancestor and the Child and the Son.It is the unknown and the forgotten; the emperor and the lord of thieves.  
  
Who should know his terrible secrets? They are not for the revenant or the redeemer, the prophet or the politico. His cry is a message, weeping and wailing, from one soul into the darkness of the next.  
  
He is calling you home._

-

By the time Seifer and Quistis made it out of the crevice, there was no way to get back to the device that supposedly contained Griever. Reluctantly, Quistis admitted that they would have to leave it there.  
  
The scientists--and Maiser--were nowhere to be seen, so they made their way out of the halls of resonating crystal and into the bright afternoon glare.  
  
The transport was still there--loaded and full. Maiser was sitting on the hood, staring dumbly at the Lunatic Pandora.  
  
Quistis cleared her throat, and Maiser jumped. "Trepe! Hyne, it's good to see you're alive--"  
  
"Oh?" Quistis asked cooly. "Was there some doubt?"  
  
Maiser gestured awkwardly. "The scientists said that going back into the Pillar was too dangerous--something about the resonance and brainwaves and junctioned paramagic--we were going to wait for you as long as we could, and then scramble back to Esthar."  
  
"We have all the readings we need, then?" Quistis asked. "That was certainly fast."  
  
"Esthar tech," Maiser said. "That, and we're not going back into that thing until we figure out what's causing the resonance and stop it. Too dangerous, remember?"  
  
Quistis sighed. This had certainly been a lot of trouble for not much at all--but sometimes that was how SeeD missions went. "All right," she said. "Let's head back, then."

-

If Nida had to rank what he thought would happen upon returning to Esthar in terms of probability, being ushered into an emergency meeting with Odine, Squall, and President Loire would have ranked somewhere just below a full-scale Lunar Cry. Of course, after the events of the last mission, the Lunar Cry was ranking much higher than it normally would have.  
  
Quistis, Seifer, and one of the Lunatic Pandora scientists were in the conference room already when Nida stepped in, just finishing up their debriefing. As soon as the door closed behind him Nida found himself the object of a great deal of scrutiny--and wanted very much to turn around and sneak out of the room.  
  
Instead, he walked to the nearest open chair and sat down.  
  
"I exzpect you vill have an interezting report?" Odine said, leaning forward and fixing Nida with his beady little eyes. Nida nodded.  
  
"I wrote it up while Selphie was driving us back," he said. "But what it boils down to is that the energy levels in Tears Point are forming a sine wave with a period of three-quarters hour. The Lunar Cry hasn't happened _yet_, so I don't know how much danger there is--"  
  
"Zere iz no danger." Odine gestured excitedly. "Zis iz perfect! The Point iz functioning az I vould expect it to! Zis iz an entirely new age of energy and para-magic!"  
  
"Doctor," Laguna interrupted. "I want to make sure that there's no cause for concern--"  
  
"Nonzense." Odine shook his head, causing the huge ruff around his neck to flop back and forth. "Zcience vill prevail. Ve vill anticipate any problem zat may arize."  
  
Laguna glanced around the table as if to say _See? I'm completely powerless over this maniac._ He inhaled softly, nodding. "Needless to say, this is all very unexpected. I would like you all to cooperate with Dr. Odine--he has some tests lined up, a more in-depth debriefing, some additional expeditions...."  
  
"That won't be a problem," Squall said. Laguna smiled at him--a gesture which the SeeD Commander heartily ignored.  
  
Laguna pushed himself away from the table. "I'll talk with Odine and Xu about what we need later and have the funds transferred," he said. "In the mean time, I don't see that there's much more we can do."  
  
Everyone pushed away from the table, heading for one of the many doors that emptied the room. Before they could make it out one,, however, Odine had accosted both Seifer and Quistis.  
  
"You vill come vith me," he insister. "Zere is much vork to be done."  
  
Seifer folded his arms. "I didn't sign on for this entire misadventure," he informed the scientist cooly. "I have things I need to get back to."  
  
Odine blinked, as if the notion of someone having a life outside of his research was a foregn one to him. "Ve vill zee," he said, disapprovingly.  
  
Quistis sighed. "What do you need, doctor?"  
  
"You vere in ze rezonating crystal," he said. "Zere is a tezt zat muzt be run. Come."  
  
Quistis glanced at Seifer, and nodded. "All right."  
  
Odine had already turned and was wandering off through the halls, counting on Quistis to follow him. She did so--it was easy, what with his short gait--and he lead her deeper and deeper into the building.  
  
They finally arrived at a large lab that looked something like Garden's Paramagic Casting Arena--reinforced walls, a few draw crystals by the door, and nothing extraneous or breakable in evidence.  
  
Odine engaged in a rapid-fire conversation with one of his aides, motioning a large piece of equipment to be brought into the room. It looked something like a surgery table, with extra electrodes and a wire headpiece. A junction-reading device, Quistis theorized.  
  
"Lie down," Odine instructed brusquely. "Zis vill not take ze minute."  
  
Quistis nodded, lying down on the bed and allowing one of the aides to attach the electrodes. There was a faint _hum_ along the mental pathways where magic was stored.  
  
"Now ve vill zee vat ze rezonance iz affecting," Odine crowed, rubbing his hands together in unmasked enthusiasm. An aide checked over everything once more, and flipped a switch.  
  
For a moment, she felt nothing. Then--  
  
_RESONANCE!_  
  
The world shook around her, magic _pulsing_ within itself, GFs coming active all at once, vision dimming, every nerve alight--  
  
_(Ohno--)_  
  
The world went totally black.  
  
The resonance continued on. 


	11. Echoes

_I looked in the mirror one day and saw my own fate, glossed over by the glare of the sun, so like me--so close, so far away. And it was watching me, as well; through that thin veneer of glass and time, I saw the doom of all things.  
  
What words exist for such a vision are incomplete, sterile without the charge of wrath and terror that they embody but do not contain. The reflection is a silent eidolon, a doppelganger, a beast of the flesh and semblance but never of the soul. What ideas haunt those empty eyes? What motion, slight, or sleight of hand could that apparition make but would shrug the tides of sanity from cowering shoulders? I am not she, but she is I--a mockery, marionette, and master._

-

_I see you._  
  
The resonance was a palpable thing, pushing in on all sides like an audible fog. But there was something else in the darkness--an unmistakable sense of _presence_, like a pair of invisible, watching eyes.  
  
_Who **are** you? _asked a voice that was not a voice.  
  
Quistis could have thought the same thing, herself.  
  
She tried to speak, but she was suddenly well aware that her vocal cords wouldn't work. Instead, she concentrated as hard as she could, and thought _(Who are **you**?)_ back at the Presence.  
  
_I see,_ the not-voice said. **_You_**_ are late._  
  
_(What?)_  
  
_Bide your time,_ the not-voice continued, charged with suspicion. _While away the hours. We **will** have you in the end._  
  
_(I don't understand--)_  
  
There was a violent tug, and the sensory world reasserted itself with a vengeance. Light burst into her eyes, sound burst into her ears, and she jerked upward against the steady pressure of a hand on her shoulder.  
  
An aide was holding her down, muttering something reassuring as he checked her vitals. Cerberus was growling intermittently in the back of her mind--it seemed like he was as uncertain of what to think of the most recent developments as she was.  
  
"What happened?" she asked, settling back down--the world was swimming in front of her eyes, and she had a feeling that the aide was right in not letting her sit up.  
  
"You know, I could show you charts and graphs for hours and not be any closer to knowing," the aide said absently. "Everything spiked, and then everything normalized, and then as far as we can tell you slipped into a coma, and now you're awake again and everything is reading as fine."  
  
_(A **coma**?)_ Quistis shook her head. "How long was I out?"  
  
"Half-hour, all told," the aide said. "Dr. Odine is looking at the results of the scan, and if any of us can catch his attention for a minute or two we'll see what he has to say on the subject."  
  
Quistis nodded. "I see," she said carefully.  
  
"Lie there for a few more minutes," the aide said. "If nothing happens, I'd say you're well enough to go--I'm not a medic, but in any case I don't see what keeping you here would do."  
  
"All right," Quistis said.  
  
These things were getting more worrying by the minute.

-

_I can't save her._  
  
Seifer had been walking down the Skyway toward his apartment, but he stopped when he heard the voice--and turned, scanning back down the way he had come. The Skyway was more-or-less empty at this time of day, and there weren't many people on the adjoining streets or the ones passing over or under it--he didn't know who had spoken, but it didn't seem likely they were speaking to _him_.  
  
Writing it off, he moved on.  
  
...only to be stopped after a few steps as the voice, somewhat louder, said **_You_**_ can't save her._  
  
"The hell?" He turned around again, scanning the area for anything he had missed.  
  
There was nothing.  
  
_She's too far gone,_ the voice continued, _ and if the Sorceress is as good as her word then--_  
  
There was an odd sensation--as ifhe was being watched, as if the owner of this voice had placed fingers on the back of his neck and was whispering into his ear. Seifer shook his head violently--this was no time to be having delusions or communing with the GFs or going insane, whatever was happening.  
  
_You know it's all ending,_ the voice said again. Seifer turned back to the road, walking as fast as he could toward his home.  
  
_(The hell?)_ he shot back, honestly not anticipating an answer.  
  
_Hell is a good word for it. Hell is a good word for the world, now._  
  
He tried to walk just a little bit faster. _(Who **are** you? ...**what** are you?)  
  
_Nothing responded.  
  
Seifer put a hand to his forehead. He must have hit his head pretty badly when he fell--it seemed like the most reasonable explanations.  
  
_(Or maybe it's--)_  
  
He put the thought out of his mind before he could finish it. He wasn't going to think about _her_--because the more he did, the more it seemed like he could still hear her, whispering in the back of his mind. _(come with me to a place of no return bid farewell to your childhood....)_  
  
With a fierce effort of will, he noted he could barely see the outline of the shopping mall from here, and started to juggle all the different ways of getting there. the Esthar street systems were confusing--it should be enough of a distraction that--  
  
_It's not good enough,_ the voice returned. _It's gone too far just to run._  
  
It wasn't _her_--it was a masculine voice, gentle and sorrowful. He pushed it away, anyway.  
  
It didn't work. _She'll die, and I can't save her,_ the voice lamented, and like an echo _her_ voice rose up below it: _(no return no return return come with me to a place of no return bid farewell....)_  
  
Seifer resisted the urge to find the nearest wall and beat his head against it. Did the universe not think he had _enough_ troubles, as it was?  
  
_But you can kill her first,_ the voice whispered.  
  
And then it was gone. No more fingers on his neck, no more words--nothing.  
  
He was alone. 


	12. Questions

_Hide nor hair of Hyne is in evidence, all evidence pointing to his great disappearance. But his shadow is everywhere, falling on the world like dark clouds on the rain. When Hyne stood with the humans he was not human; nor were his tools the humans' tools, nor were his garments those of men. What beasts did he hunt, striding across inhuman plains?_

There is a queen of all these beasts--Aedenn or Elysium, the sum of the pure and wondrous. And there is a king, dark and dire as nights without stars, and he walks from grave to grave on the coldest of days. They knew him in days past recounting. Some called him Samsara, some Purgatos, and some looked so far as to name him Hell.

We have always had a softer name for this most fated of kings, the proud one who roars his sorrow. He is Greyfur, Grimfur, Grinbatan. 

-   
  
It was with mixed anticipation that Quistis decided to confront Odine--with the full knowledge that getting him to sit still for more than three minutes at a time would be hard enough, and getting any coherent answers out of him would be immeasurably harder. Still, she had requisitioned a stack of materials that didn't seem to make any sense at all, and she was resolved to get _some_ kind of answers out of _someone_ before the day was out.

It came as a bit of a shock when she stepped through the door into his office, papers in hand and a stern look fixed firmly upon her face, only to see the diminutive scientist in what appeared to be a fast-paced argument of some sort with Seifer.

Both of them paused when she came in--Seifer rather more quickly than Odine, who gibbered on for a few more sentences before trailing off. Quistis smiled and nodded pleasantly.

"Hearing voices, Seifer?"

Seifer wore a look that said, plain as the scar on his face, _how the hell did **you** know?!_

Quistis sighed. "It looks like this problem is somewhat more widespread than I had thought it would be."

"Yeah, well, if you know what's going on, you can tell it to leave _me_ out of it," Seifer snapped back. "This isn't my problem, and if it _is_, it _shouldn't_ be!"

"Zis iz clearly an indication of ze persistence of Time Compression," Odine said--then, motioning to Seifer, continued "Zis one cannot remember vat ze voices zaid. Perhaps you vill be able to?"

"I can't remember exactly," Quistis admitted, "but it seemed to recognize me. Seemed to have expected me to come into contact with it. And it threatened me--it said 'we will have you,' or something to that effect."

Odine waved a hand imperiously. "From now on,' he instructed, "I vould like you to write down precizely everything zese voices zay. It vill be of great interest to zee vat time period zese voices contact you from."

"What--" Seifer shook his head. "What do you mean, _what time period_? Isn't it pretty obvious--"

"Time Compression iz not localized in any von time period," Odine explained irately, with the air of resenting having to explain such a fundamental concept. "Zis dizturbance could originate from any time or times. Zis iz uncertain."

Seifer was opening his mouth to snap something back when Zell came barreling into the room, face flushed, an urgent look hanging about him. Seifer rolled his eyes. "Oh, like _this_ is goign to be good," he muttered.

"Man!" Zell burst. "I'm hearing people talking to me and after this whole thing with the Tears Point thing I'm kinda worried and if the universe is going to end again I kinda wanna know so I can stop it, or something!"

Quistis stifled a chuckle, turning it into a rather awkward cough as she hid her mouth behind one hand. Trust Zell to find such a way to put it.

Odine rubbed his hands together. "Vat did it zay? Vell?"

Zell scratched the back of his neck. "Er... something about... as Sorceress. I think."

Odine nodded. "Precizely vat did it zay?"

Zell shrugged. "Exactly, I dunno, but--"

"From now on, vright it down," Odine admonished sternly.

"--but Selphie said something about hearing voices too, talking about time."

"Time _Compression_?" Odine prodded.

"She didn't say so," Zell said. "Just time."

"You must have her vrite a record of vat vas zaid and bring it to me at vonce," Odine snapped. "Go! Go!"

Zell nodded, and ran off at such a speed that Quistis was surprised the door managed to open before he ran into it. Quistis blinked.

"I doubt she'll be able to give us much information," she said.

"Any information iz good information!" Odine snapped, and hurried out of the room on some spontaneous business of his own.

Quistis glanced at Seifer. "I must admit, I'm rather surprised to see you here," she said.

"Because Hyne knows _I_ wouldn't want to figure this out," Seifer snapped.

"I meant--"

"I know what you meant." Seifer glanced toward the door. "I'm kinda surprised _Squall_ hasn't shown up," he snorted. "_He's_ hardly one to be left out of all manner of bizarre supernatural affairs."

Quistis sighed, massaging her temples. "He'll be around in about an hour after he's gone through all the available evidence, consulted every related article on the hardwire, and formed three hypotheses of his own," she said with absolute certainty. "And Rinoa will probably take her cues from him, if she's also involved."

"And why _shouldn't _she be?" Seifer rolled his eyes. "What is it with you people and improbable circumstances?"

Quistis sighed. "Bad luck, I suppose."

Seifer snorted. "Well, if you could stop rubbing it off on _me_, that's be nice," he snapped.

Quistis sighed again. "...it's not intentional, I'm sure. I suppose this means we'll need you around to see what's happening, though...."

Seifer was staring, incredulous and rather put off. Quistis almost winced.

"Fine," he snarled, "if you _have_ to have me around. I'll do what I'm _paid_ to do. But I really don't think this should be _any_ of my business.

He started to storm away, and she caught him with a gentle hand on his shoulder--he spun, catching her wrist.

For a moment, they were staring directly into each others' eyes. Seifer had an angry word at the tip of his tongue--but he held it.

"I'm sorry for your involvement in this--whatever this turns out to be," Quistis said softly. "I'll do all I can to see what's going on."

Seifer carefully released her wrist. "...thanks," he acknowledged, and hurried away.

Quistis sighed. Seifer was right, of course--this shouldn't be his problem. She knew very well what he had gone through--in some ways, more than anyone on the SeeD team had. And, although he would never know it, she had been the one who had talked to Laguna, asked him to look after him--a fact that would no doubt offend Seifer greatly if he came wise to it. This troublesome business could end up hurting him more than anyone else--and she had no interest in seeing that happen.

There' wasn't much good that could be said for the state of affairs, as it was.

Odine seemed, if anything, excited and eager to see what would happen in the near future. The fact did nothing to reassure Quistis--partly because she was acutely aware of how sketchy the information they had been able to give was, and partly because she knew the look he had in his eyes. It was the same zeal and glee he had worn when the Lunar Cry had hit Esthar, three months ago.


	13. Purview

_She had returned, and it was impossible. She had returned, and was seen walking down the long, dark corridors--past doors which should never be opened, past catacombs heaven and hell left unsolicited. It was three bows and three strikes the revenants gave her, three roses and three swords which she held. Past, present, future--all illusions, dust in the heart of stone._

She walked to the mirror, but did not look in--what use hath the Devil for her own countenance? But she kept walking, on and on down halls no mortal can traverse. And we watched her go without comprehending; we watched, and could not follow. 

- 

Contrary to Quistis's estimation, Squall wasn't in Odine's laboratory an hour later--or at all that night. He had much, much larger things to worry about.

And, at the moment, those things were manifesting themselves as a smoking hole in the middle of his guest-room floor.

Rinoa was huddled in the corner and he was holding her as tightly as he could, trying to be comforting and probably failing, but at least she had stopped _attacking _things--or attacking _nothing_. she didn't speak except for muted whimpers, and half of the time she was trying to push him away and half of the time she was trying to pull him closer, and although he had no idea what was happening he could be absolutely certain it wasn't for the best.

"She was talking to me," Rinoa whispered, , clinging to the fur on his jacket as if by letting go she'd lose him. "She was _there_, right _there_, and she was _talking _to me...."

Squall muttered something along the lines of "She's gone now," and wished he knew what was going on. Whenever he asked _who_ was speaking to her, he got the same answer--a look of horrified incomprehension and a frightened "_She_ was!" He didn't know precisely what that meant, but he was beginning to form an idea.

And he was hoping against hope that the idea was wrong.

At first, she had seemed surprised that he couldn't hear it. He had been aware of _something_--maybe a voice, maybe just some kind of subconscious twinge; in any case it hadn't said anything by the way of words, only a vague _unsettled_ feeling that lasted less than a half-second--but it wasn't the same for her. She had heard words, even is she wouldn't tell him what exactly they were--words that threatened, words so familiar as to be unmistakable.

_Time shall compress._

All existence denied. 

- 

"Something's spinning in Tears Point and making the big statues all weird."

Selphie nodded as Zell listed off the week's oddities, punctuating them each with an emphatic "Yeah!" Zell was pacing back and forth in one of the Palace's many Reception Rooms, hands in his back pockets, looking for answers in the thick carpet a few steps ahead of his current position.

"There's some resonance or something going on in the Crystal Pillar."

"Yeah!" Selphie was doing her best to agree that this was very worrying, but she didn't know if Zell was picking up the message.

"And _now_, we're hearin' _voices_." Zell stopped, aiming a few punches at a floating speck of dust. buffeted by the wind from his gloves, it eluded him every time.

"It sure is weird," Selphie agreed.

"I wanna figure this out," Zell said.

"I bet Odine will know what's going on," Selphie reasoned. "He's, like, a huge genius, you know."

"Yeah, but I don't think he has a _clue_," Zell said. "I think he's just lookin' at stuff and thinking how neat it is, and he doesn't have a clue what's going on or how to stop it. And I dunno what Squall is doing, but I think he's waiting for Esthar to tell us what to do."

"Well," Selphie said, leaning forward, "Esthar _is_ paying SeeD a lot of money, and we _do_ kinda need it ever since NORG died--"

"But _Esthar_ doesn't _know_ anything!" Zell slammed one fist into the palm of his hand as if to illustrate the point.

"Neither do we," Selphie pointed out.

"Yeah, but I bet we could fins stuff out if we wanted."

Selphie cocked her head. "Whattaya mean?"

"Look," Zell said. "This is all weird Time-Compression stuff, right? And _we_ should know about Time Compression. So _we_ should be able to figure this out."

Selphie pondered that for a moment. "Are you suggesting--"

"I think we should go back out to Tears Point," Zell said, nodding judiciously. And we should figure everything out, and we should find who's causing it, and if it's Ultimecia or something come back from the dead, well, we killed her _once_, didn't we?"

Selphie was quiet for a moment, considering that. "Think Squall will let us?"

"He will if I _tell_ him he will," Zell said with a confidence that was entirely misplaced. "Or we could just talk to Xu and take of without him ever knowing."

"That's kinda mean," Selphie pointed out.

Zell shrugged. "Nah. Squall probably doesn't want to keep track of all this, anyway."

Selphie shrugged back.

"So?" Zell planted both hands on his hips, waiting for the agreement he was sure would come. "Wanna go for it?"

The voice of reason was a very small voice indeed in the back of Selphie's mind, and it had been drowned out already by voices much louder. "Sure," she said, eyes glinting. "Sounds like fun. When should we leave?"


	14. The Illustrious

_Brevity is the heart of Truth. (At the core of Truth lies delusion.) The world is not brief--but it is altogether too much so._

Is brevity beauty?

More and more I find myself at the centre of the whirlwind, praying the winds for mercy. Does day come at the death of night? The clouds die and fall and nourish thirsting grass. I am in the eye of the worldwrath, yearning to be at its heart.

If there is hope for salvation, it is found in the hands of the Destroyer--the Creator cast away his creation, and when it followed he did what no true father could.

He plays the fiddle while Heaven burns above him. 

-   
  
Fortunately--they suspected--the voices didn't return that day. Speculation ran rampant about what had caused it, but without any actual grounding such speculation was only slightly more useful to them than a shipment of powdered Mesmerize horns. (The horns had arrived because Odine had had some bizarre idea about personal shielding from the effects of the Lunatic Pandora, but he had needed _intact_ Mesmerize horns and likely wouldn't remember the idea the next morning, anyway. It got passed down, as so many other things did, to one of his lab-assistant interns, who would waste a considerable portion of his or her education on researching it without coming to any kind of a solution but with a great deal of time to write reports that could easily be used as textbooks on what not to do. In this way, the cycle of Esthar public education went on.)

Squall was preoccupied when Selphie and Zell disappeared, and Rinoa was still badly shaken. She was still denying being able to remember what the words said--but her denial was so shaky, so _forced_, that Squall had the dark feeling that she was lying.

Once the opportunity had presented itself--late at night, when Rinoa had been convinced to sleep at last--Squall skipped the preliminary stages and decided to hear it straight from the Grendel's mouth--the breathing centre of Esthar's research, Doctor Odine.

When he arrived at the lab, despite the late hour, Odine was hard at work monitoring... something. Something that looked complex and technical and probably only made sense to Odine and his associates, who were working away in the lab below him as he watched them in roughly the same manner a Thrustaevis would watch its next meal.

"Vat do you vant?" the doctor snapped. "I am a busy man."

"I understand that," Squall said, hoping--but not really believing--that civility would gain him some points. "I'd like to see you about the fact that a number of people seem to have been hearing voices over the past day."

"Oh. _Zat_." Odine seemed totally disinterested, as if it was old news. "It iz a fluke. A meaningless fluctuation in the subliminal and prethaumatical mind brought on by ze lingering periodic effects of Time Compression."

Sometimes, Squall doubted that the Doctor himself really knew what he was saying. "I'd like to know the cause," he tried.

"Obviously," Odine explained, simultaneously monitoring what Squall could only hope wasn't an important reaction in the lab below and scanning over the results of four entirely unrelated scientific reports, "it iz all _her_ fault. Ze occurrences zeem to have coincided vith ze moment of ze junction scan--"

It was hard not to lose your patience with Odine, but Squall routinely had to deal with people who tried his patience. thus, with a good deal of sufferance, he prodded "Who is 'she?'"

"Ze zubject," Odine said, with an aggravated wave of his hand. "Ze von from ze Crystal Pillar." Odine kicked out at the console, for no readily discernible reason. He didn't return to his train of thought--it had probably derailed somewhere, causing a great deal of property damage and costing several lives.

"Why would a junction scan cause people to hear voices?" Odine was widely regarded as the most brilliant man alive. Squall always found it hard to resist the urge to use small words and talk slowly to him.

"Because ze scan _resonates_, and ze disruption resonates." Odine was sounding less inclined to talk as the conversation limped gamely on.

"I would like more information," Squall prodded.

"Vhy should you vant to know?" Odine was decidedly irate now, not only at the fact that he was being asked to sully science with practical application but also because he was stuck in the room, explaining lofty ideas to a layman. "Your job iz not to understand ze difficulty. It iz to ensure zat it does not interfere vith ze smooth operation of zis lab."

Squall refrained from telling the doctor that it really _wasn't_ his job to look after the lab, and also refrained from telling him the real reason he was looking for the information. "We've suspended all activities relating to the Crystal Pillar until these things can be resolved," he not-quite-lied, filtering out all the information that Odine didn't care about anyway. Odine took the lie at face value--apparently just assuming that if it was _his_ problem, the rest of the world would be concerned, too.

"Zere iz no danger from ze Crystal Pillar," he griped, staring sullenly at his console. "Ze resonance iz likely a zimple aftereffect of Time Compression, lunar energy, and ze zpecific powers of ze Sorceress and GF."

_(We may be getting somewhere,)_ Squall thought. "So the problem lies in the GF," he said--aware that it was probably the wrong answer, and also aware that he would get more out of Odine if he made the doctor correct him than if he showed any actual insight.

"No!" Odine gestured wildly, scowling. "Zat iz vrong! Zat iz _ignorance_!" Hopping down from his stool, he ran to the other end of the room and began assaulting one of the lab panels. "Ze reaction cannot originate from ze GF, because ze GF lacks ze starting capacity."

"Which is?"

"Ze ability to influence ze flow of time," Odine snapped. "Zere are only three things in ze vorld zat can do zat."

"Which are"

Odine scowled. "Ze resonance array at Tears Point, ze new Sorceress, and ze Time Sorceress, Ellone."

_(Rinoa hasn't been using her power for anything, recently, and I don't believe Ellone would have. Certainly nothing this strong.)_ "Tell me about the resonance array."

Odine waved a dismissing hand at him. "Zere iz nothing I vish to tell you."

If he wanted to, Squall could invoke Presidential authority. However, he was well aware that Odine didn't care a whit about what Laguna thought or wanted, and the man could very easily be arrested without changing his attitude any.

"Doctor--"

"No!" Odine hit his desk. "Zis iz a vaste of time. You do not understand ze magnitude. You focus on ze idiocy, ignoring ze very fabric of ze issue!" Odine gave the impression that he was trying to mangle a metaphor, and falling short even of that. "Zere is _bigger_ vork to be done."

"Bigger?"

"Zis iz not ze actions of any von Sorceress," Odine said. "Zis must be a reaction from ze core of Lunar energy."

_(Lunar energy doesn't make people hear things,)_ Squall thought. "Why?"

Odine rounded on him, waving his hands in a futile attempt to condense the Great Ideas of Science into words anyone could understand. "You zee zis disturbance, yes? You zee ze vaves. Ze vaves have both ze _magnitude_ and ze _frequency_, and Ultimecia made zese same vaves, but not ze _same_, because zere was greater _frequency_. Ultimecia cannot make _zese_ vaves, because ze magnitude is too great. If Ultimecia cannot, _no_ Sorceress can, because Ultimecia vas ze _greatest_. As ze frequency increases, you vill zee zat it iz a natural phenomenon in response to Time Compression. Ze voices are echoes vithout zientific merit. I decide this now."

_(As the frequency **increases**...?)_ "Doctor--"

"I vill not speak to you more," Odine said, moodily stomping back to his stool and hoisting himself up into it. "Ze Crystal Pillar must be examined. Odine has spoken."

Nothing would be accomplished by pressing him further. Squall turned and walked out, vowing to try again the next day--when the doctor's fickle interest might just grant him another chance.


	15. Calm Before

_"And this is the truth of the ultimate Destruction," the Revenant had explained. "All your smiles and your tears of joy, all your weeping and your grey lamentations, they are to the world as the clouds and the winds that may pass and even alter but will never remain. What is the great stock-mark of humanity? What sets it so above and apart? Even the lords of the sea have no control over when the oceans freeze or boil; they are with the fish, their lords and the shepherds of their doom."  
  
It is said that the truth of calamity is too great to be understood: as a pebble on a meteor would not know if the meteor plummeted, so we do not know if we are part of one great slide toward an ultimate ending. We sense only small changes and are overwhelmed by the great; in this manner, the disaster we foresee is not so terrifying as the one we cannot.  
  
I fall the portents, all the dreams, all the whispers of encroaching doom are real, then perhaps there is hope in the future after all...._

-

Seifer woke up to a note slipped carefully under his door.  
  
For a few moments, he was honestly unsure of whether or not to pick it up. It wasn't exactly a big secret as to where he was living--but it wasn't exactly common knowledge, and he didn't know who would go to the trouble of finding him just to slip a folded half-sheet of paper to him.  
  
Eventually, after convincing himself it would blow up in his hand, he walked over and snatched it up. Unfolding it, he read what was printed neatly inside.  
  
_You'll come with me to the Tear's Point._  
  
...unsigned.  
  
It didn't matter. He recognized the handwriting--it was the same neat script that he had received on countless assignments, usually saying things like _do over_. ...there was really no reason for Quistis to be leaving cryptic messages at his apartment--not that _he_ could see, at least.  
  
With an utterly inward groan, he pulled on his trenchcoat and headed for the Palace. Even if he had no interest whatsoever in going out on some harebrained escapade, he could at least see _what_ was going on.  
  


-

  
  
Rinoa was gone.  
  
Squall might have panicked, if he was anything like the type to panic. Instead, he had alerted the necessary Palace officials and begun a methodical search on his own, half of his mind complaining at him that there were more important things to be doing and the other half very, very worried that somehow the voices had returned and weren't as benign, this time.  
  
It took him an hour to cover the palace and its grounds--the grounds she might realistically gain entrance to, in any case. It took him another half-hour to go through the next logical procedures, and a bit longer to find someone who suggested he check the Ragnarok.  
  
The Ragnarok was silent and empty--no one was using it at the moment, so it just sat at the Esthar Airstation like a particularly large, particularly impressive statue. The guards at the gate let him pass as a matter of course, and without any trouble he made it into the massive Hangar.  
  
Darkness descended on him, as someone clapped both hands over his eyes from behind. He froze instead of striking back--there was a light giggle, and a whiff of a familiar scent.  
  
"Guess who?"  
  
Aggravation was beginning to win over concern, but he pushed it away in favor of relief. "Rinoa?"  
  
She laughed, releasing him--and then spinning him around, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing him squarely on the jaw. He was bewildered--and she must have noticed it, because she smiled and stared directly into his eyes. "Everyone's so worried," she said by way of explanation. "The world's not ending, Squall. You think I would let that happen?"  
  
Squall smiled back and relaxed--marginally. Rinoa was trying to lighten his day. He shouldn't be surprised about this any more--not after three months. "We don't know _what's_ happening," he chided, and then nearly felt bad for correcting her.  
  
"But it's not going to be anything _terrible_. It's not going to be _anything_ we can't handle."  
  
Squall hesitated, and Rinoa pulled back. She could see that he was formulating a response in his mind--_Prepare for the worst_, the eternal caveat in all of Squall's reasonings. She adopted a mock-frown, dropping her hands to absently fix some quirk of his furred collar.  
  
"But I could be wrong," she said, imitating solemnity. "Who knows? Maybe Ultimecia's come back and is possessing Ultima Weapon's ghost and will take up Odine as her knight and just collapse reality like a cake when you slam the oven, and we won't have any chance to fight back before we all go 'poof.' But if that's the case, then worrying about it won't help, either!"  
  
Squall didn't find anything amusing, as he was wont not to do. "We have to make sure we're prepared for whatever happens," he said.  
  
"Squall...." Rinoa frowned, looking directly at him and shaking her head slightly. "_I_ don't think anything bad is happening. _Odine_ doesn't think anything bad is happening. Are you sure you're not just seeing problems where there aren't any?"  
  
Squall thought on that for a moment. _Something _wasn't ringing true about the situation as it stood--but he couldn't put his finger on it, not _yet_. But he wasn't willing to push all caution out of his mind--there _was _something, and somehow he _knew_ that, but he couldn't articulate it at all.  
  
"You were worried about that voice," he began--  
  
Rinoa glanced away. "It was just a bad dream," she said. "That's understandable, isn't it? Everyone was so worried about all the weird things going on in the Crystal Pillar and at Tears Point that I had a nightmare. I didn't mean to worry you so much."  
  
He _was_ worried, and though Rinoa wasn't the _greatest_ of his concerns, she certainly wasn't the _least_ of them, either.  
  
But it was fairly obvious that she wouldn't put up with his caution--not _now_, anyway, and not if _she_ knew about it. And, even with years of inertia and days of concerns stacked up behind him, Squall was finding it harder and harder to see the worst in things.  
  
Sometimes, these things were just impossible to resist.

-

It wasn't hard for Seifer to find Quistis. The Palace guards knew her and directed him to where she most likely was at this time of day--the Esthar Tea Room, one of a dozen similar anterooms sometimes used as casual lounges. And, true to prediction, there she was--reading a newspaper and sipping pale Estharan tea and looking terribly proper.  
  
Seifer walked directly up to her table, dropped the note down in front of her, and--without preamble--demanded "Are you asking me out on a date, Instructor?"  
  
Evidently he hadn't sounded _quite_ as sarcastic as he'd mean to, because Quistis glanced up--obviously taken aback--and stared at him for a moment. "Excuse me?"  
  
"What's with the note?" Seifer translated.  
  
Quistis stared at him for a moment, longer, then picked the paper up and looked at it. "...I don't understand," she said.  
  
_(What a coincidence. Neither do I.)_ "You wrote it, didn't you?"  
  
"No." Quistis set it down, along with her tea. "I'll admit it looks like my handwriting, but I never wrote this."  
  
Seifer digested that for a moment. "And you never left it at my apartment either, is that right?"  
  
Quistis looked levelly at him. "Seifer, I don't know _where_ you live."  
  
Seifer mulled over that for a good two seconds.  
  
"Then what the _hell_ is going on with that?"  
  
Quistis shook her head, frowning at the offending document. "Seifer, have you given out any information, of _any_ sort, about what's going on here? To _anybody_?"  
  
Seifer couldn't believe he was being asked that. "Why, _yes_, Instructor," he snapped back. "I've been talking about it with all my _buddies_ when we meet for _lunch_ down at the _pub_. What kind of a stupid ques--"  
  
"How many people know who you are and where you live?"  
  
Seifer balked. "Why the hell do _you_ need to know?"  
  
Quistis gestured to the paper--not amused at all. "Has it occurred to you that you might be being threatened?" she asked.  
  
It hadn't.  
  
He spent a few seconds wondering how best to express his incredulity at that, but Quistis didn't give him the chance to. "Look at the writing," she said. "An unsigned note, left--it take it?--at your apartment, with rather commanding language. '_You will_ come with me.' And Tears Point isn't the most... _benign_ of places--it has a lot of symbolism behind it, and--"  
  
"And if you think that someone's planning to abduct me, drive a few hours into the Plains and kill me or something, I think you need to have your brain examined," Seifer shot back.  
  
"I doubt you've been able to make enough friends in the last three months to offset all the enemies you made in the five weeks prior," Quistis pointed out cooly. "It's not impossible that someone would still want to threaten you. Maybe--"  
  
_(Here is comes,)_ Seifer thought.  
  
"--you should give some thought to coming back to Garden."  
  
"How many times do I have to _refuse_ before you'll _get_ that I _don't want to?"_ Seifer demanded.  
  
"At the very least," Quistis conceded, "you should report this to the police."  
  
"And tell them _what_? 'Hello, someone left me an invitation at my door, could you arrest everyone with nice handwriting please?'" Seifer shook his head. "Forget it. You don't know anything about it, then whatever. Not like it's a big problem."  
  
Quistis took a breath to object--  
  
"So _sorry_ for wasting your time," Seifer said, before she had a chance to. "Have a _nice day_, Instructor."  
  
...and he hurried out the door.  
  
Quistis picked up the note, glancing over it. It was unsettling--one more bit of a puzzle that was getting more complicated by the day.  
  
She was sure--she was _absolutely certain_--that she hadn't written it. So why did it look so _familiar_...? 


	16. Bottle Message

_A seed, planted in a run-down garden, grew into a beanstalk that climbed to the land of giants in the sky. That is what the old tales tell. The seed was magic, the magic to create the ladder. The ladder was ascension. The land and sky were time.  
  
Who will climb the ladder? There is no brave youth that wants to scale eternity. There is no young man so enamored with heaven to risk the climb and fall. The beanstalk will never die, but nor will it ever bear fruit.  
  
But who is the giant to plant it?_

-

The nightmare began in the same way it had for centuries.  
  
She was walking along the beach--always the same beach, with always the same waves lapping against it. And she knew it was a nightmare, much though she couldn't say why.  
  
To her left was a crumbling ruin--some ancient site left untended, plants growing wild and feral in the heavy fall air. To her right was an expanse of blue ocean, stretching off farther that the eye could discern. And above her--  
  
--above her--  
  
--above her hovered a great looming darkness, a draconian gargoyle, a monolith of black stone and massive wings. It did not sway in the wind--but the wind tore at it, tearing it into trails of smoky fog that only _seemed_ to erode it.  
  
**Once,** rumbled a voice so deep and strong as to almost require a dream of its own, **this place was beautiful.**  
  
Once, this place was alive. Once, the field by the ruins had been filled with flowers. Now it was filled with stones and bones and withered grass.  
  
**Once, I could walk these paths and never be ashamed. Once, it was green and fertile. Now it is a desiccated corpse, the dead remain to blight the living. Do you know why, Sorceress?**  
  
It was the same question that had been asked so many times before, to so many Sorceresses, in the deep of so many nights.  
  
**Because Sorcery cannot save the world. That is not within its potential.**  
  
The ocean was blue and waving and dead. Nothing lived beneath that gentle surface.  
  
The ruins were crumbling and dirty and dead.  
  
The flowers were wilted and trampled and dead.  
  
The wild vines that grew so lushly were feral and wild and frightening, consuming every last vestige of the past to make way for its own unruly future. They writhed and grew like living things,  
  
_(Who are you?)_ she asked, as so many Sorceresses before had asked. And always, the response was the same.  
  
**I am he who comes to they who grieve and grieves with them that find me. I am the Surrogate.**  
  
The nightmare ended the same way it had for centuries. She looked up at the Castle, bleeding away into time.  
  
The wild vines grew around her.

-

Seifer returned to his apartment, several thousand gill richer and with a renewed hatred for Toramas, to find a note slipped under his door.  
  
He gave serious consideration to killing everyone.  
  
It was written in the same hand the other one had been--and it was unsigned. Cursing under his breath--and then realizing that there was no one around and cursing louder--read it.  
  
_You are my one and only love, Osan_.  
  
Seifer stared... then crumpled it, and threw it into a trashcan. He felt better, really--it was probably some kind of innocent mix-up, and the letters hadn't been meant for him at all. He didn't _know_ of an Osan who lived in the same apartment complex as he did, but it was a large building and he hadn't exactly tried to get to know people.  
  
For a while he considered putting up a sign on his door that said quite plainly that no one named Osan lived there, but he decided not to. Let whoever left the notes figure it out on their own time.  
  
He was heading toward the small bedroom when the phone rang--and he jumped. He wasn't used to being called.  
  
He wasn't used to Estharan phones, either, so it took him a few rings to figure out how to answer it. "What?"  
  
_"Seifer?"_ The voice on the other side was clear--perfectly clear. It was Xu. _"You may want to come back to the Presidential Palace. We've found something."_  
  
"Good for you. _Why_ should I come back?"  
  
_"Because you might be interested,"_ Xu said.  
  
"I don't know where you keep getting those ideas," Seifer snarled. "Did you know I just got _home_?"  
  
_"I suspected it was something like that,"_ Xu responded tersely. _"I've been leaving messages all morning."_  
  
Seifer glanced down at the phone pad, whose blinking display read **12**. Without thinking that they might not _all_ be from Xu, he hit the **DELETE ALL** command. The number reset to **0**. "Sorry that _some_ of us have to make a living," he said.  
  
Quistis might have responded to that. Xu ignored it. _"Odine pulled his head out of the clouds long enough to remember your Crystal Pillar report. He thinks he understand Griever's presence--and what's going on with the Lunar field."_  
  
"Okay. So?"  
  
_"You should listen to what he has to say."_  
  
"Any reason you can't just tell me over the phone?"  
  
_"Yes."_  
  
Seifer waited for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he snorted and asked "And what's that?"  
  
There was silence.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
After a few more empty seconds, he hung up. Disconnections weren't exactly common, but they weren't unheard of, either.  
  
He took a step toward the bedroom, and the phone rang again. Aggravated, he snatched the receiver.  
  
"_What_ is it?"  
  
_"Osan?"_ asked the voice on the other end--pretty and feminine, familiar but not placable.  
  
"Wrong number."  
  
_"You'll come with me to the Tear's Point,"_ the voice on the other end said, and hung up.  
  
Seifer was left holding the receiver, and gave the thought of killing everyone a _bit_ more consideration. Irately, he put it down--waited a few moments to make sure it wouldn't ring again.  
  
When it seemed as if it would remain silent, he went into his bedroom with the intent to lie down for a while.  
  
Five minutes later, he was on the road to the Presidential Palace.

-

Squall had been nervous and edgy all day, and he couldn't figure out quite why. Dismissing it as best he could, he chalked it up to too much time spent with Odine--the man would drive _anyone_ to adopt new neuroses.  
  
Still, it was... distracting.  
  
He had been pacing through most of the day, checking over things that he didn't need to check on, and pestering people so much that Xu had very nearly had Kadowaki order him off on vacation. (After that narrow miss, he had avoided the Garden Administration and settled for driving the Estharan scientists to drink.)  
  
He ran into Rinoa in one of the many, many halls in the Palace, and she looked almost as edgy as he was.  
  
"Squall?" she asked. "Let's go to the Lunatic Pandora."  
  
"All right," Squall responded.  
  
"I mean, I know that people were worried about the weird things going on, and they say it's not safe there, but I think _we_ can probably handle it, and I don't see why we should have to work on conjecture alone when we could be collecting hard data," Rinoa said, spilling out a perfectly rehearsed chain of reasoning that she was sure Squall had to agree to.  
  
"I said all right," Squall repeated.  
  
"And besides that, there's--what?"  
  
Squall made an offhand gesture. "Odine's given his report, but he needs more information that he can't obtain without another party sent out."  
  
"I didn't mean send another SeeD party," Rinoa argued. "I meant _us_. You and me."  
  
"All right."  
  
"It would only make since, given that--" She trailed off. "Squall? Are you all right?"  
  
Squall made the exact same offhand gesture once again. "I'm serving a pretty dismissible function here," he said. "And your Sorceress power should provide us with insights we wouldn't have had access to before. It's a perfectly valid plan."  
  
"Yes, but...." Rinoa stared at him, eyes flicking over his face for signs of sickness, drunkenness, or demonic possession. "You're normally not this... _agreeable_, especially not when I try to suggest something as a plan of action."  
  
Squall shrugged. "This one makes sense."  
  
Rinoa digested that--then smiled. "Well. glad to know that I have good ideas _some_ of the time." She walked neatly up to him, tucking her arm through his elbow and pulling him off down the hall. "When do we leave? How will we get there?"  
  
"We can take the Ragnarok," Squall said amenably. "And leave now."  
  
Rinoa ground to a halt, pulling him with her and turning him to face her.  
  
...he was _smiling_. Not a lot, but a little.  
  
Rinoa frowned. "_Now_? Isn't there some kind of obscure protocol you have to spend days going through or something?"  
  
"It can be handled from the Ragnarok," Squall told her.  
  
Rinoa shook her head. "Are you sure you're feeling all right? You're _smiling_ an awful lot."  
  
"I haven't had a chance to see you much," Squall responded.  
  
"Our Palace rooms are next to each other."  
  
"I've been busy with other things," Squall apologized. "And anyway, I'm glad I can be out there _doing_ something instead of helping Xu with paperwork. It's good to be on assignment again."  
  
Rinoa put a hand on his forehead, but didn't _feel_ a fever. Then she smiled back. "I guess _you_ would look forward to that, wouldn't you?"  
  
He responded by slimming an arm around the small of her back, pulling her in, and kissing her gently on the lips. Then her released her, walking down the hall as if no exchange had taken place. "Come on. The Ragnarok's been ready for use for days, now."  
  
Rinoa didn't ask questions. She just followed him, smiling happily to herself.  
  
It was going to be a good day--she could _feel_ it. 


	17. Shades

_It is the Starlight, winking in and out of Time so far away.  
  
It is the Eternal Nature, decaying and creating.  
  
It is the heart of the dying wildbeast and the pulse of the living monster, the suppressed and absolute, the arbitrary forgivance. It is the light slanting down from the day-star and washing away the pale shades of night, and I have it. I have it.  
  
It is the Answer.  
  
I have it._

-

It was going to be a bad day--he could _feel_ it.  
  
Zell kicked the left rear tire of the transport car, watching with some annoyance as it buckled and bent inward. There was a wide gash tracing its way around the diameter of the thing, and the part that was still more-or-less intact was melted and deformed. The rubber was sticking to the underside of the car, pooling on the ground, and looking generally unhealthy.  
  
What was even worse was that there was no way to tell exactly what had happened. It _looked_ as if someone had slashed it and then cast a Flare on it--but plains monsters didn't generally attack vehicles unless they were being run over, and there was no sign of roadkill.  
  
In any case, the car wouldn't move--or, it if did, it wouldn't move fast, in a straight line, or reliably.  
  
"...bummer," was Selphie's professional SeeD opinion upon seeing the damage.  
  
"There's gotta be a spare in this thing," Zell sad, scratching the back of his head. "So all we really gotta do is get it off the wheel. Right?"  
  
"Did we bring a jack?" Selphie was already digging around in the back of the car, searching for anything that might be useful.  
  
"Shouldn't there be one of those, too?" Zell crouched, tugging at the mass of deformed tire.  
  
"Dunno... I'm not seeing anything." Selphie hopped back out. "Zell? What do we do if we can't replace it?"  
  
Zell thought about that. "Um... I think we contact Garden so they know what's going on. Right?"  
  
"Sounds right." Selphie disappeared back into the vehicle, searching for the transponder system. "...man. We're never gonna get out to Tears Point at this rate."  
  
"Maybe it's all over."  
  
"Yeah, maybe--what?" Zell looked up. "What d'ya mean by _that_?"  
  
"If they have to send someone out ot pick us up... well, it took a long time for us to get _this_ far, so we'd have to wait all that time for _them_ and then we'd still have to drive a while to get to Tears Point," Selphie explained. "It'll take _forever_."  
  
"Yeah, but--" Zell considered that for a moment. "...never mind. It hought you--I thought I heard something else."  
  
Selphie poked her head out the window. "Ooh. The _voices_ got you, Zell?"  
  
Zell gave another strong tug to the congealed rubber. "Gee, I hope not."  
  
"Think about it."  
  
"Yeah. It'd suck to be out here where we couldn't write 'em down, or anything." Selphie giggled.  
  
Zell stared. "...think about it?"  
  
"What?"  
  
Zell gave up. The rubber didn't look like it would be removes by anything less than a machete. "I guess we wait for Garden to pick us up, then."  
  
Selphie glanced back. "Guess so."

-

They had gotten to the Airstation and were walking up the stairs into the hangar by the time Squall hesitated. Rinoa would have continued on for several steps before noticing, but the fact that her arm was still hooked through his made that rather more difficult.  
  
"Something wrong?"  
  
"......." Squall glanced around. "...I forgot my gunblade."  
  
Rinoa gave him a quizzical look. "...you did?"  
  
Squall sighed. "I'll go get it."  
  
"I guess this is why you always take so long to decide anything," Rinoa teased. "If you go too fast, you end up forgetting everything."  
  
Squall shrugged. "Garden stresses a good preparation time."  
  
"I'll bet they do." Rinoa walked to the lift. "Go ahead, Squall. I'll wait right here."  
  
Squall nodded, and walked away.

-

_Don't go._  
  
Seifer's step faltered, and he cast a glance behind him down the street. The area itself was busy enough, but no one seemed to be paying him any attention--no one had spoken.  
  
_Don't go._  
  
He winced, turned back toward his destination, and walked a bit faster. This was getting supremely aggravating.  
  
_Don't go, you **can't** go, she'll see you, she'll **kill** you--  
  
(Oh, shut up already!)_ If the Voice had been a real, physical person, Seifer would have thrown it off the skyway with very little prompting.  
  
_I can't think._ The voice was panicky, growing more and more frantic. _I'll know it when I see the blood. She's got warm blood like the rest of us. Not like Her. She's going to die, and I can't save her._  
  
_(That's damn sad for **you**.)_ Seifer was snarling to himself, walking fast enough to draw any number of surprised glances. It didn't matter. the voice kept up with him perfectly.  
  
_You don't **understand**! You're going to lose her. You're going to lose her and there's no way you can get her back. **Do something**._  
  
_(Bugger off!)_  
  
He took several more steps--and ground to a halt.  
  
The Voice was gone again.

-

Quistis, walking from the makeshift SeeD office in the Palace to the Research Laboratory, was beginning to think that her day would be unbearably dull when it took a sudden turn for the interesting.  
  
Squall was standing in the middle of the hallway, staring intently at nothing with a _listening_ air about him as if he was trying to remember something just out of his reach. Deciding to offer him some assistance, Quistis put a hand on his shoulder--  
  
--and he _jumped_, wide-eyed, spinning around and drawing the Lionheart and whipping it through the air in an arc that could have cut her head in half if she didn't evade _just_ fast enough to escape with nothing more than a deep gash across her left cheekbone. She stumbled and fell to the ground, shocked that she had startled him so badly.  
  
He stared at her for a split second in utter incomprehension, and then bolted down the hall.  
  
Heart pounding, Quistis pulled herself up along the wall. Supreme aggravation and utter terror were warring--aggravation that he had attacked her, even if by accident, and then just _run off_ without a word of apology or explanation... and terror that she had no idea what was going on, besides the thought _(Squall just **attacked** me!)_ that was rebounding inside her brain with frightening intensity.  
  
Blood was pouring down her left cheek, and she reached up to touch the injury. It was a clean cut, at least--Squall kept his gunblade in pristine condition. With a twinge of annoyance, she wished she could say the same thing about his manners.  
  
A scientist was approaching from the hall opposite the one Squall had taken, and he let out a startled yelp when he saw her. "...SeeD! Are you injured? What happened?"  
  
Quistis swallowed, brushing herself off and doing her best to smile reassuringly at the man. "I reaffirmed the common knowledge that it's not a good idea to sneak up on a man with a weapon," she said, trying to inject a hint of levity into her voice. "It's all right. I imagine it looks worse than it is."  
  
The man seemed calmed by her attitude. "Would you like an escort to the Infirmary?"  
  
"No, thank you." The blood was running down her neck and under her collar, now; it was getting rather uncomfortable. "I'll just be heading off in that direction, now."  
  
With a civil nod, she hurried off before her vest soaked up any more blood than was absolutely necessary. 


	18. Impulse

_When the moon is full, we all wear Festival masks and the demons dance among us. Look! There is the Prince and the Capering Fool, there is the clawed Kheft and the robed Lich. There is the Bloodied Man, and the woman with her face on backwards. We dance to the music of a long-silent drum that never forgets its old songs. We step in patterns and sing in tongues. Those inexplicable things, unexplainable things, are known so fully these nights when they are so strange to us in the morning._

-

It usually wasn't this hard to find Xu.  
  
Seifer had been wandering the halls of the Presidential Palace for several minutes, and it didn't help that none of the palace aides seemed to be able to give him directions--either coherent or correct. He had already tried all the obvious places--offices and labs and the like--and Xu was nowhere in evidence.  
  
He was weighing his options, nearly convinced to just leave, when he ran into Quistis as he was rounding a corner.  
  
Temper already a bit on the short side, Seifer demanded "Where's XU?" before considering any concerns of civility.  
  
Quistis nodded to him, an unvoiced sigh evident in the look she gave him. "Hello, Seifer. How's your day been?"  
  
"Terrible. Where's Xu?"  
  
Quistis glanced over his shoulder, down the hall from which he had come. "Probably back at Garden for the day," she said. "I assume she contacted you, then?"  
  
"You could say that. Do _you_ know what this is all about?"  
  
"There's going to be a general briefing later today," Quistis said. "I assume we'll all find out, then."  
  
"_When_ later today?"  
  
"Over dinner."  
  
"And she couldn't have just told me _that_, of course." Seifer shook his head--then noticed something. On the side of Quistis's face, hidden by long locks of hair, there was... something unusual. He motioned vagely toward it. "--what's that?"  
  
Quistis stiffened, turning her head slightly to as to move the bandage out of Seifer's line of sight. "Nothing," she snapped.  
  
Seifer seemed amused by her evasion. "Oh?" he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly. "Looked like something."  
  
"Nothing you need to worry abou--" she began, and froze in the middle of the syllable. Before she had been given a chance to react Seifer had stepped in, brushing back her hair and pressing two fingers into her cheekbone.  
  
He smirked, quietly and mockingly. "Looks like you've had a bit of an accident, Instructor. What was it, a Grat?"  
  
She reminded herself to breathe. Reminded herself that she wasn't in any danger. _(Not an enemy. Not an attack--)_ "It doesn't matter," she said, calculating each sound to make it seem more certain than it really was. "Why should you care?"  
  
He dropped his hand, quiet smirk enduring. "Concerned, that's all," he said. "I hope it won't leave a scar."  
  
Her skin was still raw from the injury; she could feel slight pangs where he had touched her. They raced across her skin, biting back toward bone. "It shouldn't," she said. After a moment she added "I'm not _that_ careless," aiming for a sharp repartee and falling somehow short.  
  
Seifer raised both eyebrows, mock-wounded. "I'll remember that," he said, ever-so-cooly.  
  
"Good _day_, Seifer," she said, a note of finality in her tone. _(This shouldn't hurt this much--!)_  
  
"See you," Seifer said, and stepped past her--  
  
--and a moment later, there was the sound of a body hitting the floor.  
  
He spun, scanning the hallway for threats on instinct. None was apparent--but Quistis was on the floor, not moving.  
  
_(...the hell?)_  
  
Seifer crouched, rolling her over onto her back. She was quite clearly unconscious--breathing shallowly.  
  
"...Instructor?"  
  
He shook her by the shoulder, wondering if he should be trying to get some kind of medical assistance to her.  
  
"...hello? Quistis?"  
  
She groaned slightly, and her eyes opened--moving sluggishly across her field of vision. She stared, as if she wasn't quite sure where she was.  
  
A moment passed.  
  
"...what happened?"  
  
Seifer's eyebrows raised. "You _fainted_," he said.  
  
"I--"  
  
"Fainted. Collapsed. Went unconscious. You sure you're all right?"  
  
She sat up, putting one hand out to the wall for balance. Forcing a smile, she tried to sound reassuring. "...I think I'll be going back to Garden for a while. The stress of the last few days must be getting to me."  
  
_(Like hell. Trained SeeDs don't collapse just because things get a little stressful.)_ "...what happened to your face, Instructor?"  
  
Quistis kept the smile on, as if trying to hammer the message _It's perfectly fine_ through Seifer's skepticism. "It's _utterly_ immaterial."  
  
She had hit the side of her face against the ground when she had fainted, and the bandage was pulling loose. There was a faint smear of red along her cheek--and something hit Seifer like a lightning bolt. _(I'll know it when I see the blood.)_  
  
"Someone attacked you," Seifer inferred darkly, pulling what he could from the garbled messages the Voice has told him. "Didn't they?"  
  
Quistis stared at him in open astonishment. "How did you get _that_, Osan?"  
  
Seifer felt as if he had been slammed against a wall. "What did you say?"  
  
Quistis stood up, leaving him crouching on the floor. She looked uneasy--nervous, and far too ready to push him off the track. "I said how did you get _that_ notion?"  
  
"No, you didn't." Seifer jumped to his feet. "You called me something. You called me _Osan_."  
  
Quistis way eying him, what was beginning to mount toward panic in her eyes. "Maybe _I'm_ not the one who's been too stressed over the past few days--"  
  
"Shut up and answer, already!" Seifer shook his head--and came very close to grabbing and shaking _her_. "Someone attacked you. Who was she?" _(Whoever she is, she'll have something to do with this damn Voice and whoever the hell keeps confusing me with Osan--)_  
  
"She?" For a moment, Quistis was only taken aback. "I startled Squall, and he hit me. There was no _she_ involved. Are you...."  
  
"Where is he?"  
  
"How should I know?" Quistis was getting annoyed, now. "What's going on? Taking a sudden interest in my well-being?"  
  
_You're going to lose her and there's no way you can get her back,_ the Voice echoed--or maybe it was an echo of the Voice. _Do something_.  
  
_(Shut up shut up shut **up**, already!) _"...yes! I am, okay? Now tell me where the _hell_ Squall went!"  
  
"I don't _know_!" Quistis's patience finally snapped. "he attacked me, and then he ran off without saying a word!_ I_ haven't seen him since."  
  
_Do something, _the Voice repeated.  
  
Seifer snarled. _(Well, if you could give me some **useful** information for once, I might--)  
  
The Knight has the Dragonship,_ the Voice responded, startling Seifer by being helpful for once. _He shares that territory with the Sorceress, now.  
  
**Do** something._  
  
Seifer nodded civilly to Quistis. "Right. See you around, Instructor."  
  
Then he took off down the hall, leaving a _very_ confused Quistis behind. 


	19. Allegiance

_I have seen the stars fall and in their burning descent they carve the way for cataclysm. That which rests on high is aloof to us, but it is not the distance which proves the greatest threat. Our strongest allies are those who we hate and envy most, so far away._

Who would doubt that the sun in rising climbs far from the lonely earth? Who would doubt that it is in its glory at its zenith, so high above? When it is closest, bloated and swollen at rest on the horizon, it is a weak and pale blood-light, spilling across the firmament into nightmare. Be banished, sun, for it is in thyne absence that we become most fond.

-

_"Rinoa?"_

Rinoa jumped. The voice that came through the _Ragnarok_'s communication systems was familiar, certainly--but unexpected. What possible reason could _Seifer_ of all people have to be calling her?

_"Rinoa, dammit, **answer**. This isn't a joke."_

Carefully, she walked over to the Ragnarok's control console and hit what she hoped was the communications button and not one of the controls for the blast cannon or something similar. "What's going on, Seifer?"

_"Where the **hell** is Squall, and what are you people doing?"_

Something about Seifer's tone was putting her on the defensive. "Why should you need to know?"

_"Because something's wrong. He just attacked Quistis."_

...that was such a logical non-sequitur that it took Rinoa a moment to formulate a response. "What?"

_"He attacked Quistis and then ran off, and I want to know what the **hell** is going on!"_ If anything, Seifer sounded annoyed--then again, it was _Seifer_, and she should certainly expect _that_ more than his evident concern over Quistis or his largely incredible claims against Squall.

"Don't be ridiculous," Rinoa shot back, unnerved by the accusation. "Why would he do something like that?"

_"Yeah, that's what I want to know. What are you two doing with the _Ragnarok_?"_

The unsettled feeling was only growing. "...that's not your business."

_"Is he there?"_ Seifer's voice was urgent. _"Rinoa? Is he **there**?"_

"He went back to the Palace to get his gunblade. _I_ don't know when he's going to get back!"

There was a moment of tense silence. _"...are you safe there?"_

_(Safe? From **Squall**?)_ Rinoa shook her head incredulously. "What are you trying to say? You can't expect me to believe--"

_"Believe it of not, it's not going to change anything. I'm asking you questions. Is--"_

"This is ridiculous." Her voice fell flat without her awareness, and gained a harsh edge she didn't intend. "Of all people, I would think _you_ would know how far you can stretch a joke. This isn't funny, and I don't appreciate it at _all_."

_"Dammit, Rinoa, it's not--"_

"Goodbye, Seifer." She hit the button to terminate the conversation, cutting him off before he could make another nonsensical protest. She was scowling--she put both palms to her forehead, sighing. Seifer had put her in a bad mood--worse than she would have expected, but how _could_ he radio her and make all these _accusations_, she _couldn't_ be expected to buy into them, not _seriously_--

There was a noise behind her--footsteps and the scrape of metal on metal, and she startled and turned around.

To see Squall.

He was walking up the aisle between the passenger seats, gunblade out and dragging on the floor by his side. There was a glint of red along its edge.

Involuntarily, her heart skipped. She still didn't believe Seifer, but having Squall advancing on her with a bloody gunblade was hardly the thing to ease her mind. "S--Squall?"

He blinked, as if trying to place something mentally. "...what is it?"

"Is... is something wrong?" Something was wrong, she could _feel_ it.

"I'm not sure." He shook his head, otherwise unmoving. "What's going on?"

"...Seifer just called in," she said uneasily, uncertain what kind of reaction it might elicit from him. "He said... he _claimed_ that you attacked Quistis." The edge of blood on the gunblade was clearly there--not enough for her to chalk it up to a trick of the light. "...you _didn't_, did you?"

Squall put a hand to his forehead--thankfully, not the one that was holding his weapon. "I don't know," he said. "...I can't remember."

"Wh--you can't _remember_? What do you mean?"

His hand didn't move, aside from pressing a bit harder into his skull. "I remember going back to the Palace, and I remember getting back here. I can't really remember anything _between_ those times."

Rinoa took a deep breath. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," she said carefully. "Maybe we should just go back to the Palace, not go to the Lunatic Pandora...."

"Why?"

She stared at him, not at all sure that she had heard the question right. Surely _Squall_, of all people, would rather play it safe than take this kind of a chance...? "Because we don't know what's going on."

"Then we have to find out."

"Yes, which is why--Squall, are you _sure_ you're all right?"

Squall's hand dropped. He looked tired--worn out, worn down. "...I'll do what you tell me to."

_(...you need rest. You need a **vacation**, you need--)_ "Let's go back to the Palace," she said, concern totally overriding any residual curiosity about the Lunatic Pandora.

"All right," he answered--and maybe it was only fatigue that made him sound so _meek_.

"...Squall?"

He stared at her, as if he couldn't dredge up the energy to answer to his own name.

"...put away your gunblade."

He glanced down, as if he had forgotten that he was holding it. Then he hefted it, sliding it back into its sheath without even bothering to wipe away the blood. "...let's go," he said.

Rinoa nodded, took his elbow because it seemed like the right thing to do, and lead him out.

-

Seifer had never been hung up _in his life_ before this week.

Not that he had had much occasion to make phone calls in his life--in Garden there was never anyone _to_ call who couldn't be reached in an easier fashion, as the Sorceress's Knight he had had aides to contact people for him, and as a freelancer in Esthar he hadn't wanted to call anyone--and wouldn't have known how to if he had. And now Xu had been mysteriously disconnected, some fool who thought he was Osan was calling to deliver truncated messages, and Rinoa had just cut him off in the middle of a conversation. Added to everything else, he was wondering if--for all that he was hearing voices--the rest of the world was going insane and _he_ was the only one left.

He would have been willing to bet actual money on it when he realized that sometime during the conversation, Quistis had snuck up on him and was leaning with one hand against the wall, listening intently for Hyne knew how long.

Seifer was working his way into a bad mood, but somehow he didn't think snapping at her and stalking off would help anything. "Well?" he asked--as much a prompt for her to explain _herself_ as to explain everything else.

"She doesn't listen," Quistis said. "I would have thought you'd know that."

"I knew she was stubborn, I didn't know she was _stupid_," Seifer growled.

Quistis smiled wanly. "That's a bit harsh, isn't it?"

Seifer stood up. "Yeah, sometimes the truth hurts. What's it to you?"

Quistis pushed herself off of the wall, looking a bit unsteady. Seifer had to resist the urge to grab her shoulders so that she didn't fall over. "You know, she has as little reason to believe you as you have to believe her."

"Please. _Don't_ get started on the boy who cried Malboro--"

"It's not a matter of that." Quistis turned, walking for the door as if she _expected_ Seifer to follow her by habit. "But if everyone is acting strangely, and no one can perceive that they themselves are--well, _everyone_ is disinclined to trust anyone else, at the moment."

"Tell me," Seifer deadpanned, "how am _I_ acting strangely?"

"Well, taking an active concern in someone else's well-being is certainly--"

"Oh, _shut_ it!" Seifer stopped Quistis in her tracks, and she turned in the threshold of the room. "What, it's totally out of the realm of possibility for me to _mind_ once in a while when the world goes to hell around me? Am I just supposed to play the fiddle while Esthar burns, or something?"

Quistis looked hurt, and Seifer fought the urge to ram his head into something. "...I didn't mean that," she said softly.

"No, I'll bet you didn't." He groaned _(More likely, you just didn't **think** you meant that.)_. "What were you getting at, anyway?"

Quistis glanced at the floor--then back up at him, meeting his eyes steadily. "I'm suggesting a tactical alliance," she said. "I'm not sure we can _trust_ either Squall or Rinoa at the moment, and we haven't heard anything from either Selphie or Zell, so that leaves us. _We_ know something is going wrong, and unless we work together to figure it out...."

Seifer folded his arms. "I thought we were _already_ working together."

"Not so much, no." Quistis stepped back into the room, still staring directly at him. "Neither of us is aware of any change in our behaviour. What I'm saying is--I'll watch your back, Seifer, and you can watch mine."

Seifer considered. _Something_ wasn't adding up right--but damned if he could place _what_. "What about Squall and Rinoa? What do you plan to do about them?"

Quistis glanced away. "...I don't know," she replied--then looked back, with as much resolve as she had ever shown. "...but if either of them becomes a _problem_, I'm sure we'll be able to handle it."

His ears were ringing. It reminded him of the resonance in the Lunatic Pandora. "...all right."

He turned around, walking back to the seat by the radio. There was a series of quick, light footsteps behind him, and Quistis laid a hand on his arm. He glanced over, wondering what it was _now_.

"...thank you," Quistis said earnestly.

he felt as if he had just stuck a knife into someone's back, and he didn't know _why_. "...yeah," he answered. "...glad to help."


End file.
